A different way to diagnosis acute appendicitis: machine learning.

ABSTRACT

<b><br>Indroduction</b> Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns, and make decisions with minimal human intervention.</br> <b><br>Aim:</b> Our aim is to predict acute appendicitis, which is the most common indication for emergency surgery, using machine learning algorithms with an easy and inexpensive method.</br> <b><br>Materials and methods:</b> Patients who were treated surgically with a prediagnosis of acute appendicitis in a single center between 2011 and 2021 were analyzed. Patients with right lower quadrant pain were selected. A total of 189 positive and 156 negative appendectomies were found. Gender and hemogram were used as features. Machine learning algorithms and data analysis were made in Python (3.7) programming language.</br> <b><br>Results:</b> Negative appendectomies were found in 62% (n = 97) of the women and in 38% (n = 59) of the men. Positive appendectomies were present in 38% (n = 72) of the women and 62% (n = 117) of the men. The accuracy in the test data was 82.7% in logistic regression, 68.9% in support vector machines, 78.1% in k-nearest neighbors, and 83.9% in neural networks. The accuracy in the voting classifier created with logistic regression, k-nearest neighbor, support vector machines, and artificial neural networks was 86.2%. In the voting classifier, the sensitivity was 83.7% and the specificity was 88.6%.</br> <b><br>Conclusions:</b> The results of our study show that machine learning is an effective method for diagnosing acute appendicitis. This study presents a practical, easy, fast, and inexpensive method to predict the diagnosis of acute appendicitis.</br>.