Predicting blood transfusions for coronary artery bypass graft patients using deep neural networks and synthetic data

Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) is a common cardiac surgery, but it continues to have many associated risks, including the need for blood transfusions. Previous research has shown that blood transfusion during CABG surgery is associated with an increased risk for infection and mortality. The current study aims to use modern techniques, such as deep neural networks and data synthesis, to develop models that can best predict the need for blood transfusion among CABG patients. Results show that neural networks with synthetic data generated by DataSynthesizer have the best performance. Implications of results and future directions are discussed.