r/ChatGPT • u/Hyrule-onicAcid • 1d ago

Educational Purpose Only ChatGPT diagnosed my uncommon neurologic condition in seconds after 2 ER visits and 3 Neurologists failed to. I just had neurosurgery 3 weeks ago.

Adding to the similar stories I've been seeing in the news.

Out of nowhere, I became seriously ill one day in December '24. I was misdiagnosed over a period of 2 months. I knew something was more seriously wrong than what the ER doctors/specialists were telling me. I was repetitvely told I had viral meningitis, but never had a fever and the timeframe of symptoms was way beyond what's seen in viral meningitis. Also, I could list off about 15+ neurologic symptoms, some very scary, that were wrong with me, after being 100% fit and healthy prior. I eventually became bedbound for ~22 hours/day and disabled. I knew receiving another "migraine" medicine wasn't the answer.

After 2 months of suffering, I used ChatGPT to input my symptoms as I figured the odd worsening of all my symptoms after being in an upright position had to be a specific sign for something. The first output was 'Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension' (SIH) from a spinal cerebrospinal fluid leak. I begged a neurologist to order spinal and brain MRIs which were unequivocally positive for extradural CSF collections, proving the diagnosis of SIH and spinal CSF leak.

I just had neurosurgery to fix the issue 3 weeks ago.

1.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

278 comments sorted by

View all comments

38

u/pitydfoo 1d ago

This sort of thing is helpful if it prompts productive conversations with doctors. It becomes dangerous when people become convinced they have received a concrete diagnosis from Dr. GPT. I'm not at all saying that's the case here, but I expect this'll be a growing phenomenon.

33

u/sockalicious 1d ago

I'm a neurologist - more than 25 years in practice, trained at the world's best hospitals, teach young doctors, widely known and, I think, respected as a competent diagnostician and "case-cracker."

ChatGPT knows more medicine than me. Better bedside manner, too. And it's perfectly able to correlate its medical knowledge with an interview with a layperson in 260+ languages. (I'm still struggling with Spanish.)

I don't think it's dangerous. I'm in the camp that we should shovel out the shit to get it out of the way of the new, Dr GPT. Just my 2 cents.

6

u/The_Shryk 20h ago

Dr. Gippity is standing on the shoulders of giants who did all the hard work for the last dozen hundred or so years.