New risk calculator could lead to more successful heart operations

Patients could receive a greater benefit from open heart surgery thanks to a new computer model aimed at helping surgeons to better calculate risk and decide whether it's safe to operate. This project, jointly funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and The Alan Turing Institute, will develop a new platform using machine learning to identify patients who are most likely to have a successful operation. Over 30,000 adult patients are considered for heart surgery every year in the UK, and risk prediction plays a major role in the decision-making process made by doctors and patients. Assessing risk before open heart surgery is crucial due to the potential complications that can arise during and after the operation. To calculate a patient's risk before surgery, heart surgeons currently use models such as the EuroSCORE – but this may overestimate the actual risk, partly due to improvements in patient management since the model was developed.