Utilization of Artificial Intelligence to Improve Equitable Healthcare Access for Breast Implant Patients

Recently, mandated FDA patient decision checklists were developed with the goal of improving the informed decision-making process for patients considering breast implants. However, these checklists are written at reading levels far higher than recommended by the National Institutes of Health and the American Medical Association. This study aims to improve the accessibility, and therefore, the utility of the mandated FDA patient literature for the average breast implant patient using the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). Patient decision checklists were obtained from the 3 most utilized breast implant manufacturers in the United States-Allergan, Mentor, and Sientra. A novel patient decision checklist was synthesized by AI, written at the sixth grade reading level, using these checklists as source material. The AI-assisted checklist was edited by plastic surgeons for both formatting and content. The overall readability of Allergan, Mentor, and Sientra patient checklists correlated with the college reading level. These documents were of a statistically significantly higher reading level than the AI-assisted checklist, which was written at the recommended sixth grade level. Text composition analysis similarly demonstrated substantial differences between the AI-assisted and FDA-mandated literature. The currently mandated breast implant patient checklists are written at a college reading level and are inaccessible to the average patient. The authors propose a new patient decision checklist, generated with the assistance of AI, to improve healthcare access within plastic surgery. This simplified material can be used as an adjunct to the current checklists to improve shared decision making.