Quality of the Information provided by ChatGPT for Patients in Breast Plastic Surgery: Are we already in the future?

Abstract

Introduction: In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has gained popularity, even in the field of plastic surgery. It is increasingly common for patients to use the internet to gather information about plastic surgery, and AI-based chatbots, such as ChatGPT, could be employed to answer patients' questions.The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of medical information provided by ChatGPT regarding three of the most common procedures in breast plastic surgery: breast reconstruction, breast reduction, and augmentation mammaplasty. Methods: The quality of information was evaluated through the expanded EQIP scale. Responses were collected from a pool made by ten resident doctors in plastic surgery and then processed by SPSS software ver. 28.0. Results: The analysis of the contents provided by ChatGPT revealed sufficient quality of information across all selected topics, with a high bias in terms of distribution of the score between the different items. There was a critical lack in the “Information data field” (0/6 score in all the 3 investigations) but a very high overall evaluation concerning the “Structure data” (>7/11 in all the 3 investigations). Conclusion: Currently, AI serves as a valuable tool for patients; however, engineers and developers must address certain critical issues. It is possible that models like ChatGPT will play an important role in improving patient's consciousness about medical procedures and surgical interventions in the future, but their role must be considered ancillary to that of surgeons.

Keywords

• Artificial Intelligence
• ChatGPT
• EQIP Scale
• Augmentation mammaplasty, Breast reduction, Breast reconstruction