"AI's Role in Identifying Risky Alcohol Use Pre-Surgery"

A new analysis suggests that artificial intelligence could help identify patients at risk of dangerous alcohol use before surgery by analyzing contextual clues in their medical records, such as notes, test results, or billing data. The study used a natural language processing model to assess the records of over 53,000 surgical patients and found that the AI model classified three times as many patients at risk compared to diagnosis codes alone. The findings highlight AI as a potential tool for clinicians to identify patients in need of intervention or postoperative support, potentially improving surgical outcomes.