Knowledge on heart condition of children based on demographic and physiological features

We evaluated a population of 7199 children between 2 and 19 years old to study the relations between the observed demographic and physiological features in the occurrence of a pathological/non-pathological heart condition. The data was collected at the Real Hospital Português, Pernambuco, Brazil. We performed a feature importance study, with the aim of categorizing the most relevant variables, indicative of abnormalities. Results show that second heart sound, weight, heart rate, height and secondary reason for consultation are important features, but not nearly as decisive as the presence of heart murmurs. Quantitatively speaking, systolic murmurs and a hyperphonetic second heart sound increase the odds of having a pathology by a factor of 320 and 6, respectively.