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N. Lawrentschuk
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P1.12 - Poster Session/ Community Practice (ID 232)
- Event: WCLC 2015
- Type: Poster
- Track: Community Practice
- Presentations: 1
- Moderators:
- Coordinates: 9/07/2015, 09:30 - 17:00, Exhibit Hall (Hall B+C)
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P1.12-007 - Thoracic Surgery Information on the Internet: Multilingual Quality Assessment (ID 2517)
09:30 - 17:00 | Author(s): N. Lawrentschuk
- Abstract
Background:
Previous data suggests quality of Internet information regarding surgical conditions and their treatments is variable. However, no comprehensive analysis exists for Thoracic surgery.
Methods:
World Health Organization Health 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 had HON principles examined. We compared website quality to assess for tertile (thirds) and language differences. A further evaluation of the English site types was undertaken, with a comparative analysis of website provider types.
Results:
‘Lung Cancer’ returned over 150 million websites, whereas ‘Ravitch Procedure’ returned less than 250 thousand. Less than 10% of websites are HON accredited with differences by search term (p<0.05) and tertiles (p<0.05) of the first 150 websites but, in contrast to earlier work in other tumour streams, not between languages. Oncological keywords regarding conditions and procedures were found to return a higher percentage of HON-accreditation than cosmetic search terms. The percentage of HON-accredited sites was similar across all four languages (p<0.05). In general, the first tertile contained a higher percentage of HON-accredited sites for every keyword. Figure 1 Figure 2
Conclusion:
Clinicians 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.
