Quality and readability of the dental information obtained by patients on internet: Criteria for selecting medical consultation websites

Abstract

Background: The main objective of this study is to examine the quality of the information available for patients online with regards to the apicoectomy surgical procedure, both on general and critically selected websites. The hypothesis is that general websites has less quality than other that have been pre-selected. Material and Methods: A search for the English term “apicoectomy” was performed online. The first 100 websites that appeared in both Google and Yahoo were analysed. Seven validated instruments were used for these two dimensions: quality (DISCERN, JAMA and EQIP), and readability (FRES, Fog Scale, FKRGL and SMOG). Results: A total of 21 websites (10.5%) were selected. The readability of the websites in both groups was difficult or very difficult. With regards to the quality of the websites, the DISCERN instrument indicated an average value of 2.28 [2.14-2.39] for all of the websites, therefore indicating very low quality with serious defects; however, in the selected websites, the average quality was 3.16 [2.84-3.48], indicating potential, but not serious defects ( p<0.001). There were statistically significant differences for the FRES values (p = 0.030), with a greater readability in the selected group of websites. Conclusions: We believe that it is very important for the population to become aware of and learn how to use certain exclusion criteria when selecting medical consultation websites, as in doing so, they will be able to obtain a higher quality of information from these websites.