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Brochu et al. Art Int Surg 2024;4:411-26 Artificial
DOI: 10.20517/ais.2024.61
Intelligence Surgery

Original Article Open Access

Evaluating ChatGPT’s efficacy in addressing
common patient questions in plastic surgery

consultations

1
1
Baylee M Brochu , Nicholas A Mirsky , Seth R Thaller 2
1
School of Medicine, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA.
2
Dewitt Daughtry Family Department of Surgery, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, University of Miami Miller
School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA.
Correspondence to: Baylee M Brochu, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1600 NW 10th Ave #1130, Miami, FL
33136, USA. E-mail: bayleebrochu@med.miami.edu

How to cite this article: Brochu BM, Mirsky NA, Thaller SR. Evaluating ChatGPT’s efficacy in addressing common patient
questions in plastic surgery consultations. Art Int Surg 2024;4:411-26. https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/ais.2024.61
Received: 5 Aug 2024 First Decision: 10 Sep 2024 Revised: 29 Oct 2024 Accepted: 7 Nov 2024 Published: 10 Dec 2024

Academic Editor: Andrew A. Gumbs Copy Editor: Pei-Yun Wang Production Editor: Pei-Yun Wang

Abstract
Aim: This study aims to investigate the ability of ChatGPT to answer common patient questions related to the five
most common aesthetic procedures.

Methods: We asked three questions, two of which were the same across procedures, for each of the five most
common plastic surgery procedures as determined by the 2022 American Society of Plastic Surgery (ASPS)
Procedural Statistics Release. These were posed to ChatGPT on the same day, using the same account. Then, they
were compared to the corresponding information on the ASPS website.
Results: We found that ChatGPT provides accurate, organized, and grammatically correct responses to common
patient questions. It was comparable to the ASPS website in terms of comprehensiveness of the complications
listed across procedures. However, its responses regarding recovery time were less detailed than the
corresponding ASPS articles. It included accurate information on recovery time that was unavailable on the ASPS
site. For procedure-specific questions, ChatGPT was more detailed 2/5 times, less detailed 1/5 times, and provided
a completely different answer than the ASPS website 2/5 times.

Conclusion: This study provides support for ChatGPT’s utilization as a tool to improve the efficiency of
consultations for aesthetic procedures. However, it is important to recognize ChatGPT’s limitations in answering

© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as
long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and
indicate if changes were made.

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