Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39930514›Full record

ArticleCritical care (London, England)2025

Comparative evaluation and performance of large language models on expert level critical care questions: a benchmark study.

Jessica D Workum, Bas W S Volkers, Davy van de Sande, Sumesh Arora, Marco Goeijenbier, Diederik Gommers, Michel E van Genderen

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Critical care (London, England), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
18citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

18 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. [Application effect of LLMs as decision-support tools in emergency burn treatment].Zhonghua shao shang yu chuang mian xiu fu za zhi · 2026
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Jessica D WorkumDepartment of Adult Intensive Care, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Bas W S VolkersDepartment of Adult Intensive Care, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Davy van de SandeDepartment of Adult Intensive Care, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Sumesh AroraPrince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, Australia.
Marco GoeijenbierDepartment of Adult Intensive Care, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Diederik GommersDepartment of Adult Intensive Care, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Michel E van GenderenDepartment of Adult Intensive Care, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. m.vangenderen@erasmusmc.nl.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundLarge language models (LLMs) show increasing potential for their use in healthcare for administrative support and clinical decision making. However, reports on their performance in critical care medicine is lacking.

methodsThis study evaluated five LLMs (GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, GPT-3.5-turbo, Mistral Large 2407 and Llama 3.1 70B) on 1181 multiple choice questions (MCQs) from the gotheextramile.com database, a comprehensive database of critical care questions at European Diploma in Intensive Care examination level. Their performance was compared to random guessing and 350 human physicians on a 77-MCQ practice test. Metrics included accuracy, consistency, and domain-specific performance. Costs, as a proxy for energy consumption, were also analyzed.

resultsGPT-4o achieved the highest accuracy at 93.3%, followed by Llama 3.1 70B (87.5%), Mistral Large 2407 (87.9%), GPT-4o-mini (83.0%), and GPT-3.5-turbo (72.7%). Random guessing yielded 41.5% (p < 0.001). On the practice test, all models surpassed human physicians, scoring 89.0%, 80.9%, 84.4%, 80.3%, and 66.5%, respectively, compared to 42.7% for random guessing (p < 0.001) and 61.9% for the human physicians. However, in contrast to the other evaluated LLMs (p < 0.001), GPT-3.5-turbo's performance did not significantly outperform physicians (p = 0.196). Despite high overall consistency, all models gave consistently incorrect answers. The most expensive model was GPT-4o, costing over 25 times more than the least expensive model, GPT-4o-mini.

conclusionsLLMs exhibit exceptional accuracy and consistency, with four outperforming human physicians on a European-level practice exam. GPT-4o led in performance but raised concerns about energy consumption. Despite their potential in critical care, all models produced consistently incorrect answers, highlighting the need for more thorough and ongoing evaluations to guide responsible implementation in clinical settings.

Indexed as

BenchmarkingCritical CareHumansLarge Language ModelsSurveys and QuestionnairesBenchmarkingCritical careGenerative artificial intelligenceLarge language models

Identifiers

PMID39930514
PMCPMC11809097

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.