Multilingual Analysis of the Quality and Readability of Online Health Information on the Adverse Effects of Breast Cancer Treatments

Abstract

P = .001), categorical general surgery (1211 of 4429 [27%] to 1636 of 4261 [38%]; χ 2 = 188.41; P < .001), and urology (130 of 532 [24%] to 128 of 462 [28%]; χ 2 = 4.61; P = .03) programs. Female applicants to orthopedics remained low (193 of 1360 [14%] to 226 of 1387 [16%]; χ 2 = 8.77; P = .003). There was no decrease in female applicants to any surgical subspecialty residency program from 2008 to 2018.For surgical fellowship programs (Table 1), there was an increase in the percentage of female applicants to colorectal (32 of 113 [28%] to 57 of 130 [44%]; χ 2 = 5.03; P = .03) and pediatric surgery (32 of 64 [50%] to 44 of 82 [54%]; χ 2 = 9.43; P = .002). The trend was not significant for female applicants to vascular (24 of 131 [18%] to 38 of 126 [30%]; χ 2 = 2.85; P = .09), thoracic (14 of 108 [13%] to 32 of 122 [26%]; χ 2 = 3.53; P = .06), and plastic surgery fellowships (111 of 342 [32%] to 47 of 122 [39%]; χ 2 = 3.14; P = .08).In US medical school graduating classes, there was a significant increase in Asian (3324 [22%] to 4660 [24%]; χ 2 = 4.98; P = .02) and Hispanic (1187 [8%] to 1760 [9%]; χ 2 = 88.84; P < .001) graduates. There was a corresponding decrease in black (1113 [7%] to 1280 [6.5%]; χ 2 = 49.87; P < .001) and white (10 358 [68%] to 12 186 [62%]; χ 2 = 427.11; P < .001) graduates. Race/ ethnicity-related changes in the applicants varied (Table 2). A majority of specialties displayed no significant change in Hispanic and black applicants and a decrease in the percentage of Asian applicants to surgical residency and fellowship programs.

Silver lining of COVID-19: Heightened global interest in pneumococcal and influenza vaccines, an infodemiology study

“…Other studies have warned against potential online misinformation, and have encouraged careful curation of online health information [49,50]. As in other areas of medicine [11,37,51,52], care must be taken in the provision of accurate and accessible online health information that may influence the health behaviors of many.…”

A Multimetric Readability Analysis of Online Patient Educational Materials for Submental Fat Reduction

“…Online readability analyses have been performed for various breast reconstructive procedures, [ 16 , 17 , 20 – 22 ] as well as for cosmetic procedures including breast augmentation, abdominoplasty, rhinoplasty, and botulinum toxin injections. [ 23 – 25 ].…”

“…To avoid inadvertent bias (e.g., search results being influenced by previous browsing history), the search query was performed on an Incognito browser and location filters, advertisements, and sponsored results were disabled. As patients are most likely to access webpages only from the first page of search results, the first 12 unique websites were screened [ 16 ]. All articles containing patient educational materials on submental fat reduction within one click of each parent website were included in our analysis [ 17 ].…”

Quality and readability of online information on idiopathic subglottic stenosis

“…The use of the DISCERN and readability metrics have been used in peer‐reviewed publications on the quality and readability of online resources both in and outside of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. 14 , 15 , 16 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 …”