Background: Although spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an effective treatment for manag-ing chronic pain, many patients have understandable questions and concerns regarding this therapy. Artificial intelligence (AI) has shown promise in delivering patient education in healthcare. This study evaluates the reliability, accuracy, and comprehensibility of ChatGPT’s responses to common patient inquiries about SCS. Methods: Thirteen com-monly asked questions regarding SCS were selected based on the authors’ clinical experi-ence managing chronic pain patients and a targeted review of patient education materials and relevant medical literature. The questions were prioritized based on their frequency in patient consultations, relevance to decision-making about SCS, and the complexity of the information typically required to comprehensively address the questions. These questions spanned three domains: pre-procedural, intra-procedural, and post-procedural concerns. Responses were generated using ChatGPT-4.0 with the prompt “If you were a physician, how would you answer a patient asking...” Responses were independently assessed by 10 pain physicians and 2 non-healthcare professionals using a Likert scale for reliability (1-6 points), accuracy (1-3 points), and comprehensibility (1-3 points). Results: ChatGPT’s re-sponses demonstrated strong reliability (5.1 ± 0.7) and comprehensibility (2.8 ± 0.2), with 92% and 98% of responses, respectively, meeting or exceeding predefined thresholds. Ac-curacy was 2.7 ± 0.3, with 95% of responses rated sufficiently accurate. General queries, such as “What is spinal cord stimulation?” and “What are the risks and benefits?”, re-ceived higher scores compared to technical questions like “What are the different types of waveforms used in SCS?” Conclusion: The findings demonstrate ChatGPT’s potential as a supplementary tool for patient education, particularly in addressing general and proce-dural queries about SCS. However, the AI's performance was less robust in addressing highly technical or nuanced questions.
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Bianco et al. (2025) studied this question.