STUDY DESIGN: Comparative Analysis. OBJECTIVES: The American College of Surgeons developed the 2022 Best Practice Guidelines to provide evidence-based recommendations for managing spinal injuries. This study aims to assess the concordance of ChatGPT-4o and Gemini Advanced with the 2022 ACS Best Practice Guidelines, offering the first expert evaluation of these models in managing spinal cord injuries. METHODS: The 2022 ACS Trauma Quality Program Best Practices Guidelines for Spine Injury were used to create 52 questions based on key clinical recommendations. These were grouped into informational (8), diagnostic (14), and treatment (30) categories and posed to ChatGPT-4o and Google Gemini Advanced. Responses were graded for concordance with ACS guidelines and validated by a board-certified spine surgeon. RESULTS: ChatGPT was concordant with ACS guidelines on 38 of 52 questions (73.07%) and Gemini on 36 (69.23%). Most non-concordant answers were due to insufficient information. The models disagreed on 8 questions, with ChatGPT concordant in 5 and Gemini in 3. Both achieved 75% concordance on clinical information
Gemini outperformed on diagnostics (78.57% vs 71.43%), while ChatGPT had higher concordance on treatment questions (73.33% vs 63.33%). CONCLUSIONS: ChatGPT-4o and Gemini Advanced demonstrate potential as valuable assets in spinal injury management by providing responses aligned with current best practices. The marginal differences in concordance rates suggest that neither model exhibits a superior ability to deliver recommendations concordant with validated clinical guidelines. Despite LLMs increasing sophistication and utility, existing limitations currently prevent them from being clinically safe and practical in trauma-based settings.