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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Oncol.
Sec. Head and Neck Cancer
Volume 14 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1353031

Assessing the role of advanced artificial intelligence as a tool in multidisciplinary tumor board decision-making for primary head and neck cancer cases

Provisionally accepted
Benedikt Schmidl Benedikt Schmidl 1*Steffi U. Pigorsch Steffi U. Pigorsch 2Fabian Stögbauer Fabian Stögbauer 3Cosima C. Hoch Cosima C. Hoch 1Timon Hussain Timon Hussain 1Barbara Wollenberg Barbara Wollenberg 1Markus Wirth Markus Wirth 1
  • 1 Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
  • 2 Department of RadioOncology, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
  • 3 Institute of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    1) Background: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a complex malignancy that requires a multidisciplinary approach in clinical practice, especially in tumor board discussions. In recent years, artificial intelligence has emerged as a tool to assist healthcare professionals in making informed decisions. This study investigates the application of ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4.0, natural language processing models, in tumor board decision-making. (2) Methods: We conducted a pilot study in October 2023 on 20 consecutive head and neck cancer patients discussed in our multidisciplinary tumor board (MDT). Patients with a primary diagnosis of head and neck cancer were included. The MDT and ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4.0 recommendations for each patient were compared by two independent reviewers and the number of therapy options, the clinical recommendation, the explanation and the summarization were graded. (3) Results: In this study, ChatGPT 3.5 provided mostly general answers for surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. For clinical recommendation, explanation and summarization ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 scored well, but demonstrated to be mostly an assisting tool, suggesting significantly more therapy options than our MDT, while some of the recommended treatment modalities like primary immunotherapy are not part of the current treatment guidelines. (4) Conclusions: This research demonstrates that advanced AI models at the moment can merely assist in the MDT setting, since the current versions list common therapy options, but sometimes recommend incorrect treatment options and in the case of ChatGPT 3.5 lack information on the source material.

    Keywords: HNSCC1, Multidisciplinary Tumorboard2, radiotherapy 3, Artificial Intelligence4, ChatGPT5

    Received: 09 Dec 2023; Accepted: 26 Mar 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Schmidl, Pigorsch, Stögbauer, Hoch, Hussain, Wollenberg and Wirth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Benedikt Schmidl, Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.