According to the portal, Alex was four years old when he began to experience chronic pain. His mother, Courtney, said if he didn’t take painkillers every day, he would have had a breakdown.
Soon after the pain began, Alex began to change. He became moody and tired, and began to have fits of anger. Alex also dragged his left leg when walking and began to experience severe headaches.
When Alex started having problems with his teeth, the boy was taken to the dentist. The doctor suspected Alex was grinding his teeth and referred the family to a specialist, who inserted a speculum into Alex’s mouth to help him breathe better at night. At first this seemed to solve the problem, but more symptoms appeared.
When Courtney noticed Alex wasn’t growing, she took him to his pediatrician, who said the pandemic was affecting his development.
Taking Alex to numerous doctor’s appointments, Courtney spent three years searching for answers and consulted with 17 doctors.
“We saw so many doctors. At one point we ended up in the emergency room. I kept pushing,” she told Today.com.
Finally, Courtney turned to artificial intelligence ChatGPT, which, as studies have shown, is correct 72 percent of the time when making medical diagnoses, the publication notes.
“I actually spent the night on (the computer) looking at all this stuff,” she said.
Courtney looked at Alex’s test results and entered them into ChatGPT. The chatbot is back with tethered cord syndrome.
After seeing the chatbot diagnosis, Courtney knew “it made sense.”
Tethered cord syndrome results in abnormal attachment of the spinal cord to the spinal canal, limiting blood flow as children grow. This leads to numbness, pain, muscle weakness and problems with motor control.
Symptoms include difficulty walking, discolored patches of skin, numbness in the legs and back, severe leg or back pain, scoliosis, problems with bladder and bowel control, and loss of muscle mass, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
It is estimated to occur in less than one percent of U.S. children per year.
Alex has the mildest form of the disease, spina bifida, which causes a small tear in the spine but does not cause nerve damage. This form is more difficult to diagnose because the defect is smaller and harder to see.
After ChatGPT diagnosed Alex, he underwent surgery this summer. The boy is now recovering. According to his mother, the boy is now happy and enjoys playing sports and spending time with other children.
A study published last month by researchers at Mass General Brigham in Boston found that ChatGPT made the correct diagnosis 72 percent of the time, about the same rate as a resident physician, while more experienced doctors were typically correct about 95 percent of the time .
