Multimodal AI-Guided Recovery Management After Lung Cancer Surgery

This study is a multicenter, prospective, randomized controlled trial designed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of a multimodal artificial intelligence (AI)-guided postoperative recovery management system in patients after lung cancer surgery. Eligible patients will be enrolled after surgery when their clinical condition is stable and will be randomly assigned to either an AI-guided recovery management group or a usual postoperative care group.

Patients in the AI-guided group will receive usual postoperative care plus a multimodal AI-based recovery management system. The system will collect patient-reported symptoms, vital signs, physical activity, respiratory rehabilitation information, recovery-related data, and, when needed, wound or chest-related images or short videos. Based on these data, the system will provide recovery feedback, general nursing advice, respiratory rehabilitation reminders, activity guidance, and risk stratification alerts. For red-flag symptoms or high-risk conditions, the system will advise patients to contact the clinical team or seek medical care.

Patients in the usual-care group will receive standard postoperative management after lung cancer surgery and will complete symptom assessments at the same prespecified time points, but they will not receive AI-generated individualized recovery feedback or AI-generated risk alerts.

The primary outcome is the number of MDASI-LC-derived target symptom threshold events within 30 days after surgery. Target symptoms include pain, fatigue, disturbed sleep, shortness of breath, and cough. Secondary outcomes include overall target symptom burden, quality of recovery, time to recovery to a mild-symptom state, functional interference, respiratory rehabilitation adherence, physical activity adherence, unplanned healthcare utilization, pulmonary complications, and unplanned readmission.