Radiology on Internet: advice in consulting websites and evaluating their quality

Abstract

Services offered by Internet are increasing continually and 15,000 medical websites covering all the specialties are available presently. Finding relevant information with a spider-web organization is difficult. We recommend starting with hierarchical lists which propose a selection of sites corresponding to medical specialties. We give our selection of important radiological websites dealing with image databases, case reports, radioanatomy and continuing medical education. While surfing the Web, an evaluation of the quality of websites is necessary. We used quality criteria proposed by Darmoni to rate the quality of ten websites. The global quality is good; help pages and external links are the main noticed shortcomings. All webmasters should pay attention to quality criteria and show visible marks of Darmoni criteria on their home page. To be able to foresee which Internet options should be developed, we evaluated our website and sent a questionnaire to our users. Clinical cases are the most requested facilities; they could be used for continuing medical education.

<p>Mammographic density parameters and breast cancer tumor characteristics among postmenopausal women</p>

“…However, for mammographic density, this has not been established. Some studies report no heterogeneity in the association between mammographic density and breast cancer tumor characteristics;12–22 while others indicate differences by hormone receptor status,3,23–28 invasiveness,22,29 phenotype,30,31 tumor size,22,26,28,32,33 and stage 34. Most studies have limited the assessment of mammographic density qualitatively as defined by the BI-RADS classification, or quantitatively as percent dense area (PDA); the other mammographic density parameters, dense area (DA) and non-dense area (NDA) have seldom been taken into account.…”

CT colonography: Project of High National Interest No. 2005062137 of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR)

“…In fact, some Web sites or Web pages are often short-lived because either they are suppressed owing to lack of interest or they are moved to new addresses. This implies that when surfing the Internet, one can never be sure to find again a resource that one has consulted in the past [12,13].…”

“…Some Web sites also differentiate access between patients and medical professionals, with content targeted to the specific user and different levels of discussion of the subject [8][9][10][11][12][13]. In the field of radiology, numerous resources exist.…”

“…Esistono peraltro siti in cui l'accesso viene differenziato tra pagine per i pazienti e pagine per il medico, con contenuti ovviamente dedicati all'utente specifico e con differente approfondimento della materia [8][9][10][11][12][13]. In ambito radiologico le risorse sono molteplici.…”

“…pagine hanno durata breve, per due principali motivi: possono essere cancellati per scarso interesse oppure spostati su indirizzi differenti dall'originale. Pertanto, navigando su Internet non si ha mai la certezza di trovare una risorsa a distanza di tempo da una precedente consultazione [12,13].…”