Web-based medical information searching by Chinese patients with breast cancer and its influence on survival: Observational study

Abstract

Background: The internet allows patients to easily look for health information. However, how Chinese patients with breast cancer use the internet has rarely been investigated, and there is a scarcity of information about the influence of internet use on survival. Objective: This observational study aimed to investigate the details of online medical information searching by Chinese patients with breast cancer and to determine whether internet use has any survival benefits. Methods: Patients who were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer at Peking Union Medical College Hospital between January 2014 and December 2015 were enrolled. We obtained information on their internet-searching behavior and gathered data from the patients' medical and follow-up records. The associations between internet use and other clinic-pathological factors were analyzed. A Cox proportional-hazards model and the Kaplan-Meier method were used for disease-free survival (DFS) analyses. Results: A total of 973 patients with invasive breast cancer who underwent definitive surgery took part in the study. Among them, 477 cases (49.0%) performed web-based breast cancer information searching before the initial treatment. A multivariate logistic regression analysis suggested that web-based breast cancer information searching was significantly associated with younger age (odds ratio [OR] 0.95, 95% CI 0.94-0.97, P