IMR Press / RCM / Volume 24 / Issue 11 / DOI: 10.31083/j.rcm2411330
Open Access Original Research
Analyzing the Interactions between Environmental Parameters and Cardiovascular Diseases Using Random Forest and SHAP Algorithms
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1 School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, 85100 Potenza, Italy
2 School of Medicine: Interdisciplinary of Medicine, University of Bari, 70124 Bari, Italy
*Correspondence: vito.telesca@unibas.it (Vito Telesca)
Rev. Cardiovasc. Med. 2023, 24(11), 330; https://doi.org/10.31083/j.rcm2411330
Submitted: 4 April 2023 | Revised: 25 July 2023 | Accepted: 31 July 2023 | Published: 24 November 2023
Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by IMR Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Abstract

Background: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) remain the predominant global cause of mortality, with both low and high temperatures increasing CVD-related mortalities. Climate change impacts human health directly through temperature fluctuations and indirectly via factors like disease vectors. Elevated and reduced temperatures have been linked to increases in CVD-related hospitalizations and mortality, with various studies worldwide confirming the significant health implications of temperature variations and air pollution on cardiovascular outcomes. Methods: A database of daily Emergency Room admissions at the Giovanni XIII Polyclinic in Bari (Southern Italy) was developed, spanning from 2013 to 2019, including weather and air quality data. A Random Forest (RF) supervised machine learning model was used to simulate the trend of hospital admissions for CVD. The Seasonal and Trend decomposition using Loess (STL) decomposition model separated the trend component, while cross-validation techniques were employed to prevent overfitting. Model performance was assessed using specific metrics and error analysis. Additionally, the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) method, a feature importance technique within the eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) framework, was used to identify the feature importance. Results: An R2 of 0.97 and a Mean Absolute Error of 0.36 admissions were achieved by the model. Atmospheric pressure, minimum temperature, and carbon monoxide were found to collectively contribute about 74% to the model’s predictive power, with atmospheric pressure being the dominant factor at 37%. Conclusions: This research underscores the significant influence of weather-climate variables on cardiovascular diseases. The identified key climate factors provide a practical framework for policymakers and healthcare professionals to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on CVD and devise preventive strategies.

Keywords
hospital admissions
cardiovascular diseases
climate
time series decomposition
random forest
XAI - eXplainable Artificial Intelligence techniques
feature importance
Funding
School of Engineering (University of Basilicata)
Figures
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