Scoping review: artificial intelligence in patient education for scoliosis.

BACKGROUND

Scoliosis is a prominent and disabling spinal deformity often presenting in adolescence, causing pain and movement dysfunction. Treatment involves repeated surgical interventions to straighten the spine gradually. Due to the invasive nature and natural disease progression, patients require a deep understanding of the condition for optimal engagement in treatment and associated physiotherapy for rehabilitation. The latest method of patient education is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to offer tailored information to patients with scoliosis. There are currently no reviews assessing the effects of AI tools in patient education in scoliosis.

METHODS

Literature searches from PubMed, Embase, Scopus and Web of Science yielded a total of 450 papers after duplicates were excluded. These were independently screened by 2 reviewers with conflicts resolved through consensus, resulting in 5 studies for data extraction. Key themes and information were extracted by two reviewers and grouped by similar trends for analysis.

RESULTS

The 5 included studies were conducted between 2023 and 2025, in the USA and Europe. They predominantly assessed the use of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Bard to deliver content and FAQ-style information. Most studies assessed readability, perceived usefulness and reliability, and reported high accuracy ratings and user enjoyment. All 5 studies highlighted the promise of AI in scoliosis patient education, but underlined the need for clinician oversight to ensure the accuracy of the information provided and tailoring to individuals to maximise results.

CONCLUSION

AI has an emerging and promising role in patient education; however, clinician involvement and integration are paramount to target the relevant information to best benefit patients. Current issues included text which was too complicated for the target audience, a lack of trust in the output and a lack of clinician oversight. Despite this, all 5 studies reported overall positive results for the adoption of AI in patient education in scoliosis.