Readability and Quality of Large Language Model Patient Education for Trigeminal Neuralgia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for patient health education, yet the readability and educational quality of LLM-generated information on trigeminal neuralgia (TN) have been insufficiently evaluated. This cross-sectional benchmarking study compared TN educational content generated by five publicly available LLMs (Doubao, DeepSeek, Wenxin Yiyan, Tongyi Qianwen, and GPT-5). Twenty frequently asked TN questions covering basic disease knowledge, etiology/risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention/rehabilitation were presented to each model using standardized prompts. Readability was assessed using seven established indices, educational suitability using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool for Understandability and Actionability (PEMAT), and overall information quality using the Global Quality Score (GQS). Two clinical experts independently evaluated all responses, with disagreements resolved by a senior adjudicator. Statistical analyses compared model performance, thematic differences, and correlations among the evaluation metrics. Significant differences were observed among the models for readability, PEMAT, and GQS scores. GPT-5 generated the most linguistically complex responses but achieved the highest ratings for educational suitability and information quality. In contrast, Wenxin Yiyan produced the most readable text but generally scored lower on PEMAT and GQS. Content category influenced readability, with prevention/rehabilitation and etiology/risk-factor topics being more difficult to read, whereas PEMAT and GQS remained relatively consistent across themes. Readability indices showed strong internal consistency and weak-to-moderate positive correlations with PEMAT and GQS, while PEMAT and GQS demonstrated a moderate positive correlation. These findings suggest that model selection influences expert-rated educational suitability and overall information quality, whereas topic complexity primarily affects readability. Because patient comprehension, satisfaction, trust, health outcomes, factual accuracy, and clinical safety were not evaluated, these results should be interpreted as an expert-rated benchmarking analysis rather than evidence of clinical readiness.