Boy visits 17 doctors in 3 years for chronic pain in vain before ChatGPT gives him correct diagnosis
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Even though ChatGPT has a high level of diagnostic accuracy but non-professionals should utilize it with caution. However, the AI tool could be useful as a tool for human doctors to diagnose challenging cases, as per a recent study posted to medRxiv.
A mother described how her son's three years of persistent pain and multiple doctor visits were finally resolved after she asked ChatGPT. The AI tool looked at the data she had provided, including MRI scans, and gave the proper diagnosis.
According to Today, Courtney, who opted not to use her last name, reportedly took her then-4-year-old son, Alex, to dentists due to probable cavities or molar problems. However, it eventually kicked off three years of 17 doctor visits without any proper diagnosis.
When ChatGPT suggested a diagnosis of tethered cord syndrome, "it made a lot of sense," mom Courtney recalled to https://t.co/LaKO1WBr7r https://t.co/zlB6TmmAIi
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 11, 2023
ChatGPT may transform medicine and promote self-diagnosis
Generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models like Chatbots, particularly ChatGPT, have the potential to revolutionize the medical industry by enabling self-diagnosis by offering information on symptoms and alternative diagnoses for multiple diseases.
Researchers examined whether ChatGPT could correctly determine a range of clinical conditions in the current study, released to the medRxiv preprint server.
As per NewsMedical.Net, for each of the 40 frequently encountered cases, ChatGPT 4.0 might offer two diagnoses.
The 4.0 version of ChatGPT requires 8.0 diagnostic inputs to solve 90% of instances in rare cases. For all prompts, ChatGPT 4.0 consistently outperformed ChatGPT 3.50 in common scenarios.
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In all situations, the top 3 accuracy for ChatGPT 4.0 was 100.0%, and the top 2 accuracy for ChatGPT 3.50 was more than 90.0%.
The results showed that ChatGPT 3.50 could solve >90% of cases within two suggested diagnoses and ChatGPT 4.0 could solve all cases within three indicated diagnoses.
The findings for version 4.0 were substantially better than those for version 3.50, and ChatGPT's suggested diagnoses were significantly the same as a proper medical diagnosis.
The results of the study suggest that ChatGPT could be a useful tool to support human medical discussions in the diagnosis of complex cases.
Instead of just pasting medical diagnoses from books, websites, or academic papers, ChatGPT 4.0 interprets them semantically.
Although ChatGPT has a high degree of accuracy in identifying common scenarios, the chatbot explicitly advises users to use it with caution and to visit a doctor before drawing any conclusions about a patient's clinical condition.
How did ChatGPT diagnose Alex's condition?
Early this year, when Courtney finally received some answers from ChatGPT, an unusual source, her quest to help her son live pain-free finally started to show some fruit.
The distraught mother registered for an account and provided the artificial intelligence platform with all of the knowledge she had about her son's symptoms and all of the data she had access to from his MRIs.
Courtney remarked, "I went line by line of everything that was in his (MRI notes) and plugged it into ChatGPT. I put the note in there about ... how he wouldn’t sit 'criss-cross applesauce.' To me, that was a huge trigger (that) a structural thing could be wrong."
"It made a lot of sense," Alex's mother acknowledged when ChatGPT suggested he might have tethered cord syndrome.
According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, tethered spinal cord syndrome is a neurological condition brought on by tissue attachments that restrict the movement of the spinal cord within the spinal column. The spinal cord is abnormally stretched as a result of these attachments.
With the help of ChatGPT, Courtney was able to locate a Facebook community for parents of kids with tethered cord syndrome and set up an appointment with a neurosurgeon who looked over Alex's MRI scans and learned exactly what was wrong.
After being diagnosed, Alex had surgery to correct his tethered cord syndrome. Although he is still recovering, Courtney said sharing his experience might be helpful to other parents going through a similar ordeal, stressing that "you have to be your kid’s advocate."