A Comparative Review of Quantum Neural Networks and Classical Machine Learning for Cardiovascular Disease Risk Prediction

Cardiac risk prediction is critical for the early detection and prevention of cardiovascular diseases, a leading global cause of mortality. In response to the growing volume and complexity of healthcare data, there has been increasing reliance on computational approaches to enhance clinical decision-making and improve early detection of cardiac risks. Although classical machine learning techniques have demonstrated strong performance in cardiovascular disease prediction, their efficiency and scalability are increasingly challenged by high-dimensional and large-scale medical datasets. Emerging advances in quantum computing have introduced quantum machine learning (QML) as a promising alternative, offering novel computational paradigms with the potential to outperform classical methods in terms of speed and problem-solving capability. This review analyzed twelve studies, evaluating data types, quantum architecture, performance metrics, and comparative efficacy against classical machine learning models. Our findings indicate that QNNs show promise for enhanced predictive accuracy and computational efficiency. However, significant challenges in scalability, noise resilience, and clinical integration persist. The translation of quantum advantage into clinical practice necessitates further validation on large-scale with diverse datasets.