Individualized Treatment Effects of Bougie versus Stylet for Tracheal Intubation in Critical Illness
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-6-2023
Publication Title
American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine
Abstract
Rationale: A recent randomized trial found that using a bougie did not increase the incidence of successful intubation on first attempt in critically ill adults. The average effect of treatment in a trial population, however, may differ from effects for individuals. Objective: We hypothesized that application of a machine learning model to data from a clinical trial could estimate the effect of treatment (bougie vs. stylet) for individual patients based on their baseline characteristics ("individualized treatment effects"). Methods: This was a secondary analysis of the BOUGIE (Bougie or Stylet in Patients Undergoing Intubation Emergently) trial. A causal forest algorithm was used to model differences in outcome probabilities by randomized group assignment (bougie vs. stylet) for each patient in the first half of the trial (training cohort). This model was used to predict individualized treatment effects for each patient in the second half (validation cohort). Measurements and Main Results: Of 1,102 patients in the BOUGIE trial, 558 (50.6%) were the training cohort, and 544 (49.4%) were the validation cohort. In the validation cohort, individualized treatment effects predicted by the model significantly modified the effect of trial group assignment on the primary outcome (P value for interaction = 0.02; adjusted qini coefficient, 2.46). The most important model variables were difficult airway characteristics, body mass index, and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score. Conclusions: In this hypothesis-generating secondary analysis of a randomized trial with no average treatment effect and no treatment effect in any prespecified subgroups, a causal forest machine learning algorithm identified patients who appeared to benefit from the use of a bougie over a stylet and from the use of a stylet over a bougie using complex interactions between baseline patient and operator characteristics.
First Page
1602
Last Page
1611
PubMed ID
36877594
Volume
207
Issue
12
Recommended Citation
Seitz, Kevin P.; Spicer, Alexandra B.; Casey, Jonathan D.; Buell, Kevin G.; Qian, Edward T.; Graham Linck, Emma J.; Driver, Brian E.; Self, Wesley H.; Ginde, Adit A.; Trent, Stacy A.; Gandotra, Sheetal; Smith, Lane M.; Page, David B.; Vonderhaar, Derek J.; West, Jason R.; Joffe, Aaron M.; Doerschug, Kevin C.; Hughes, Christopher G.; Whitson, Micah R.; Prekker, Matthew E.; Rice, Todd W.; Sinha, Pratik; Semler, Matthew W.; and Churpek, Matthew M., "Individualized Treatment Effects of Bougie versus Stylet for Tracheal Intubation in Critical Illness" (2023). School of Medicine Faculty Publications. 1276.
https://digitalscholar.lsuhsc.edu/som_facpubs/1276
10.1164/rccm.202209-1799OC