aceComparative Analysis of Readability Levels of Hand Surgery Patient Information on the ASSH Website and Artificial Intelligence
Background The American Medical Association (AMA) recommends patient education materials (PEMs) be written at a sixth-grade level to ensure accessibility. This study aims to compare hand surgery topics from the American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) website and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated PEMs to evaluate their alignment with the AMA's recommendations. Methods Ninety-eight hand surgery topics from the ASSH Hand Care "The Upper Extremity Expert" website were analyzed. Artificial intelligence (…
When asked to target a sixth-grade level, Gemini 2.0 Flash and ChatGPT-4 produced hand surgery patient materials that were easier to read and shorter than the original ASSH website content.
Default AI-generated patient materials and the existing ASSH materials were written above the recommended sixth-grade level, with AI's initial output at college level, which limits accessibility for patients.
The study measured readability only, and the authors state that the accuracy of AI-generated patient materials and their accessibility to patients with varying health literacy still need to be ensured.
Evidence
- Peer-reviewedHAND2026-10-08
How should this claim be treated?
Truvace Impact Record TRV-2026-1734, v1: “Comparative Analysis of Readability Levels of Hand Surgery Patient Information on the ASSH Website and Artificial Intelligence.” Truvace, 2026-10-17. /record/TRV-2026-1734 (accessed at citation time). sha256 0cca50a27932e905…
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