The Quality of Pediatric Orthopaedic Information on the Internet

Abstract

Background Many patients use the Internet for health information. However, there are few guarantees to the reliability and accuracy of this information. This study examined the quality and content of Internet webpages for ten common pediatric orthopedic diagnoses. Methods We identified ten common diagnoses in pediatric orthopedics: brachial plexus injury, cerebral palsy, clubfoot, developmental dysplasia of the hip, leg length discrepancy, osteochondroma, polydactyly, scoliosis, spina bifida, and syndactyly. We used two of the most popular search engines to identify the top ten websites for each disease. We evaluated the websites utilizing both the quality-based Health On the Net Foundation criteria and our own content-based grading sheets. The custom grading sheets focused on essential information about disease summary, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. Results Three Orthopedic surgeons graded 98 academic, commercial, non-profit and physicians’ websites for ten diseases. Academic websites scored the highest in content (mean 60.8%±15.5), while commercial websites scored the lowest (mean 46.7%±22.2). Among the diagnoses, osteochondroma websites had the highest content scores (mean 75.8%±11.8), while polydactyly websites had the lowest content scores (mean 39.3%±15.7). In contrast, websites about developmental dysplasia of the hip had the highest HON scores (65.0±11.1), while those about brachial plexus birth palsy scored the lowest (42.6%±16.9). Among the content subgroups, scores were generally higher for disease summary and diagnostics and lower for prognosis. Conclusions The Internet websites reviewed demonstrated a wide range of content and information. We found that non-profit and academic websites were the most reliable sources while commercial and, surprisingly, physician-run websites were the least reliable. We advise physicians to talk with their patients about the information they get on Internet and how it dictates their expectations. We hope this study, combined with further understanding of how our patients use this information, can help improve Internet content. Clinical Relevance Physicians should know their patients may be receiving misleading information from the Internet and be able to discuss this with their patients.

Is quality of YouTube content on Bankart lesion and its surgical treatment adequate?

“…When we scanned the literature, we encountered a large number of publications on evaluating video quality of different branches and diseases and all of them concluded that the accuracy of the information and quality of the videos were poor. The results of our study were consistent with the results of those studies [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…There are various studies in the literature on orthopedic disorders and their surgical treatments, including distal radius fracture [20], carpal tunnel syndrome [21], pediatric orthopedics [19], cervical disk herniation [22], spinal stenosis treatment [29], and knee arthroscopy and injuries [18]. In these studies, popular search engines (Google/Yahoo/Yandex) were investigated instead of YouTube.…”

The Inadequacy of Pediatric Fracture Care Information in Emergency Medicine and Pediatric Literature and Online Resources

“…[24][25][26][27][28] Nonprofit and academic Web sites have been found to be the most reliable sources, whereas commercial and physician-run Web sites are the least reliable. 29 Our aim was to evaluate both online and textbook information to provide a more comprehensive survey of available information. Our study was unique in the evaluation of pediatric fracture information in particular and in the incorporation of the recently published AAOS guidelines to serve as gold standards.…”

Do Pediatric Patients Have a Right to Know?

“…As the ongoing challenge of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children attests, some people might be immune to this form of rational argument [15,16]. Moreover, the increasing availability and accessibility of unfiltered and unvetted information obtained from sources on the internet-including websites, blogs, social media networks, and the like-can radically affect the ability of physicians to counter preformed and deeply held beliefs with more reliable and trustworthy data [17][18][19].…”