Louie Dexter L, Earp Brandon E, Blazar Philip E
Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis St, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Orthopedics. 2012 Jul 1;35(7):595-9. doi: 10.3928/01477447-20120621-06.
The Internet is available to researchers as a tool for studying long-term outcomes, but no recent research exists on how to best use it. The authors hypothesize that using the Internet can be at least 75% effective in locating patients lost to follow-up. With Institutional Review Board approval, the authors searched for 66 patients lost to follow-up after a period of 10 years or more with no contact. They tested an Internet searching protocol developed in 2004 and developed an alternate protocol. In all, 74% (49/66) of patients were located.
互联网可供研究人员作为研究长期结果的工具使用，但目前尚无关于如何最佳利用它的近期研究。作者推测，利用互联网查找失访患者的有效性至少可达75%。经机构审查委员会批准，作者对66例失访10年或更长时间且无任何联系的患者进行了查找。他们测试了2004年制定的互联网搜索方案，并制定了替代方案。总共找到了74%（49/66）的患者。
