2023-09-13 16:07:09
USA
When 17 doctors failed, ChatGPT diagnoses Alex (4)
Doctors spent three years searching for the cause of a four-year-old boy’s symptoms. But only artificial intelligence could provide answers to the question of the child’s suffering.
Updated13. September 2023, 6:07 p.m
ChatGPT gave the mother the answer to what her son was suffering from. (symbol image)
IMAGO/Blue Jean Images
A boy from the USA suffered from pain and stunted growth, among other things.
After 17 doctors found no explanation for the symptoms, the mother consulted ChatGPT.
Artificial intelligence suggested “tethered cord syndrome,” and a doctor confirmed the diagnosis.
More than a dozen doctors searched in vain for the origin of the suffering of four-year-old Alex from the USA. In desperation, his mother Courtney questioned the artificial one Intelligence ChatGPT, what her son’s symptoms could mean. Alex suffers from severe pain, chews on all sorts of things and stops growing, as the “Business Insider” writes, among others. In 2021, it appeared as if Alex had an imbalance between his left and right sides of his body.
Alex’s mother visited 17 different doctors in three years, but no one had any advice. Only ChatGPT provided the correct answer: the four-year-old suffers from one Abnormality in the spinal cord.
Although the AI text program ChatGPT does not specialize in medicine, it diagnoses patients in the emergency room at least as correctly as doctors, according to a study published on Wednesday. According to the Dutch study authors, the chatbot, which uses artificial intelligence (AI), even outperformed the work of doctors in some cases – but was still prone to errors.
For their study, the researchers examined 30 cases of patients who had been treated in a Dutch emergency room in the past year. They fed ChatGPT the anonymized patient data, lab tests, and doctors’ observations and asked the chatbot to make five possible diagnoses. They then compared this with the doctors’ diagnosis list and finally matched it with the correct diagnosis.
The doctors found the correct diagnosis in 87 percent of cases among the five suggestions, and with ChatGPT version 3.5 even in 97 percent of cases. “Simply put, this means that ChatGPT was able to suggest medical diagnoses, similar to what a human doctor would do,” said emergency physician Hidde ten Berg from the Jeroen Bosch Hospital in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
“Tied spinal cord”
When questioning the artificial intelligence, Courtney listed all the symptoms from the MRI recording. For example, Alex couldn’t sit cross-legged. ChatGPT suggested the neurological syndrome “Tethered Cord Syndrome,” in which the spinal cord is connected to the surrounding tissue of the spine. Through researching this disease, the mother recognized parallels between her and other children’s symptoms with this disease.
At an appointment with a new neurosurgeon, he confirmed the diagnosis of ChatGPT. On an MRI, the doctor was able to determine where Alex’s spine had fused. The boy was operated on and is currently recovering from the surgical procedure.
Doctors warn against internet diagnoses
Despite the positive outcome for Alex, artificial intelligence is not a replacement for a human diagnosis. ChatGPT partially invents answers, a process called “hallucination.” The bot is also susceptible to simple calculation errors. The free version of Chat GTP in particular “solves” Sudokus incorrectly or calculates the BMI incorrectly.
It is therefore advisable to always have any diagnostic assumptions made by ChatGPT checked by a doctor. For example, a symptom evaluation does not replace blood tests or imaging procedures such as X-rays, ultrasound or CT scans.
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