The identification and prediction of atrial fibrillation in coronary artery disease patients: a multicentre retrospective study based on Bayesian network.

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) coexisting with coronary artery disease (CAD) remains a prevailing issue that often results in poor short- and long-term patient outcomes. Screening has been proposed as a method to increase AF detection rates and reduce the incidence of poor prognosis through early intervention. Nevertheless, due to the cost implications and uncertainty over the benefits of a systematic screening programme, the International Task Force currently recommends against screening. This study is to employ Bayesian networks (BN) for assessing the pre-test probability (PTP) of AF in patients with CAD.

Methods: A total of 12,552 patients with CAD were divided into the CAD patients with AF group (CHD-AF group) and the CAD patients without AF group (non-AF group). Univariate analysis and LASSO regression method were used to screen for potential risk factors. The maximum-minimum climb (MMHC) algorithm was used to construct the directed acyclic graph (DAG) of BN. Predictive power was tested using internal validation, external validation and 10-fold internal cross-validation. Finally, the generated BN model was compared with four machine learning algorithms.

Results: Fourteen indicators were included in the BN, including age, gender, systolic blood pressure (SBP), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), serum uric acid (UA), gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), direct bilirubin (DBIL), lipoproteins [LP(a)], NYHA cardiac function grading, diabetes mellitus and hypertension, palpitation, dyspnoea and the left atrial diameter. The BN model performs well on both the test set (AUC = 0.90) and internal 10-fold cross-validation (AUC = 0.89 ± 0.01).

Conclusion: The prediction model of AF with CAD constructed based on BN has high prediction performance and may provide a new tool for large-scale AF screening.