Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 28, 2024
Date Accepted: Dec 1, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Oral Surgery Consent Form Assessment via GATWICK: Conventional versus Artificial Intelligence
ABSTRACT
Background:
Before surgery, it is necessary to obtain informed consent from the patient or their legal guardian. Standardized written informed consent forms (ICFs) are commonly used by health care providers to document this process. Ideally, these forms should include all the relevant information about a planned procedure, written in a straightforward manner which can be easily understood.
Objective:
This study aimed to compare oral surgery ICFs distributed via the internet (i.e., conventional Web-based forms) with artificial intelligence (A.I.)-generated ones in order to assess their quality and readability.
Methods:
Google Search and four different large language models (LLMs) were used to collect 136 conventional and 77 A.I.-generated ICFs about ten different oral surgical procedures. Quality assessment was achieved through a specifically designed 11-item questionnaire. The readability of the forms was assessed via six different readability formulas.
Results:
The median total score of all 213 ICFs was 31 (out of 55) points. Median readability corresponded to a 12th grade reading level (versus the recommended 6th grade reading level for medical information). Employment of A.I. through LLMs resulted in significantly higher total scores (p = 0.006), as well as easier readability (p < 0.001), compared to conventional ICFs.
Conclusions:
ICFs on various oral surgical procedures performed only fairly in terms of quality and did not match the recommended reading level. The implementation of A.I. is promising and may serve as an additional comprehensive preoperative patient information tool, however it does not resolve the overall problem regarding ethical patient care. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
