Gastric cancer–related information on the Internet: incomplete, poorly accessible, and overly commercial

Killeen, Shane; Hennessey, Arthur; Hassan, Y.; Killeen, Kelvin; Clarke, Nick; Murray, Kevin P.; Waldron, Brian

doi:10.1016/j.amjsurg.2009.12.015

Cited by 32 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Many studies analyzing website quality have established that commercial breast, gastric, and colorectal websites have higher rates of inaccuracies compared to government and academic websites [14,[17][18][19].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sifting Through It All: Characterizing Melanoma Patients’ Utilization of the Internet as an Information Source

Hamilton

Scali

et al. 2014

J Canc Educ

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This study describes how melanoma patients used the Internet as a melanoma information source and how it impacted their clinical encounter and treatment decision. From 2010 to 2013, melanoma patients were invited to complete a 23-question paper survey with open- and close-ended questions. Thirty-one of the 62 patients approached completed the survey. The majority (90 %) of respondents used the Internet as a melanoma information source. Most (90 %) had used the search engine Google. The most commonly searched topics were melanoma treatment (96 %), screening (64 %), and prevention (64 %). While most respondents (85 %) found the Internet was a useful melanoma information source, over half (54 %) found melanoma websites at least somewhat difficult to understand. Many (78 %) believed it increased their understanding of their diagnosis, 71 % thought it influenced their treatment decision, and 59 % felt it impacted their specialist consultation. This study informs health care professionals that many melanoma patients search the Internet for information regarding their diagnosis and that it may impact their disease understanding and treatment decisions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sifting Through It All: Characterizing Melanoma Patients’ Utilization of the Internet as an Information Source

Hamilton

Scali

et al. 2014

J Canc Educ

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“…Killeen et al investigated gastric cancer patient information and found that sites were overly commercial, the information provided was incomplete and the websites were often difficult to access 6 . Moran and Oliver assessed internet information on hip fractures and frequently found a conflict of interest between the provider and the information available 7 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of internet derived patient information

Ward

Leach

2012

annals

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INTRODUCTIONThe internet is a widely used, powerful resource for patients to research medical conditions. There is an extensive amount of information available on the internet. It is important for patient information to be accurate and in an easily accessible format. This article aims to assess the quality of patient information on hydrocephalus and compares the findings with recent evaluations in other surgical specialties.METHODSThe term ‘hydrocephalus’ was searched for on the search engines http://www.google.com/, http://www.bing.com/ and http://www.yahoo.com/. The top 20 results of these searches were assessed using the University of Michigan consumer health website evaluation checklist.RESULTSThe quality of patient information websites on hydrocephalus is highly variable. Websites rarely provide sufficient authorship information, do not review their information regularly enough and only reference material occasionally. The background of the provider was found to influence the quality of the website, with academic and care providers creating the best websites.CONCLUSIONSOn comparing our findings with those of recent studies from other surgical specialties, it was found that there was often a conflict of interest between the background of the provider and the information supplied. It is recommended that clinicians personally research material for their patients to be able to guide them to suitable, accurate websites.

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“…Access beyond the first page of results by patients is rare [24]. Thus, the first 150 websites yielded by each search were identified and sequentially screened for quality as defined by the HON Foundation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thoracic Surgery Information on the Internet: A Multilingual Quality Assessment

et al. 2017

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BackgroundPrevious data suggest that quality of Internet information regarding surgical conditions and their treatments is variable. However, no comprehensive analysis of website quality exists for thoracic surgery.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to quantify website quality in a multilingual setting using an international standard for assessment.MethodsHealth On the Net (HON) principles may be applied to websites using an automated toolbar function. We used the English, French, Spanish, and German Google search engines to identify 12,000 websites using keywords related to thoracic conditions and procedures. The first 150 websites returned by each keyword in each language were examined. We compared website quality to assess for tertile (is the quality better in first, second, or third 50 websites returned) and language differences. A further analysis of the English site types was undertaken performing a comparative analysis of website provider types.ResultsOverall, there are a considerable number of websites devoted to thoracic surgery: “lung cancer” returned over 150 million websites. About 7.85% (940/11,967) of websites are HON-accredited with differences by search term (P<.001) and tertiles (P<.001) of the first 150 websites, but not between languages. Oncological keywords regarding conditions and procedures were found to return a higher percentage of HON-accreditation. The percentage of HON-accredited sites was similar across all four languages (P=.77). In general, the first tertile contained a higher percentage of HON-accredited sites for every keyword.ConclusionsClinicians should appreciate the lack of validation of the majority of thoracic websites, with discrepancies in quality and number of websites across conditions and procedures. These differences appear similar regardless of language. An opportunity exists for clinicians to participate in the development of informative, ethical, and reliable health websites on the Internet and direct patients to them.

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Gastric cancer–related information on the Internet: incomplete, poorly accessible, and overly commercial

Cited by 32 publications

References 18 publications

Sifting Through It All: Characterizing Melanoma Patients’ Utilization of the Internet as an Information Source

Sifting Through It All: Characterizing Melanoma Patients’ Utilization of the Internet as an Information Source

Evaluation of internet derived patient information

Thoracic Surgery Information on the Internet: A Multilingual Quality Assessment

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