Kumar Venkatesan S, Subramani Suresh, Veerapan Senthil, Khan Shah A
Department of Orthopaedics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.
J Pediatr Orthop B. 2014 Mar;23(2):135-8. doi: 10.1097/BPB.0000000000000000.
The Internet has become a major source of health information on various aspects of clubfoot diagnosis and management. The World Wide Web becomes the first knowledge portal for a large number of anxious parents seeking information on clubfoot. Thus, a good quality webpage should provide necessary and comprehensive information on clubfoot so as to establish clarity in treatment options, compliance and bracing protocols. In contrast, modest quality information can induce bias and poor follow-up. We objectively evaluated online health information on clubfoot using the DISCERN tool. Using the universal search engine, Google, we conducted a Boolean search for the term 'clubfoot'. Only the first 50 sites providing health information on clubfoot were included in the study. We examined 334 links to include 50 of them. During analysis three websites were excluded because of duplication of content leaving 47 websites that were examined using the DISCERN tool. As per this tool, a score of less than 40% was graded as 'poor', 40-79% as 'fair' and at least 80% as 'good', whereas the overall quality was graded as 'low', 'moderate' and 'high' on similar standards. The overall quality of the publication was 'low' in 40% (19) websites, 'moderate' in 28% (13) and 'high' in 32% (15) of the websites we evaluated. Six (13%) of the publications showed good reliability; 25 (54%) showed fair reliability and 16 (33%) were unreliable. With regard to the quality of information on treatment choices, 44.7% (21) were 'good', 46.8% (22) were 'fair' and 8.5% (four) were 'poor'. We conclude that the quality of websites providing online health information on clubfoot needs significant improvement with emphasis on a universally acceptable template for disease information.
互联网已成为关于马蹄内翻足诊断和治疗各方面健康信息的主要来源。万维网成为众多焦虑的家长寻求马蹄内翻足信息的首个知识门户。因此，一个高质量的网页应提供关于马蹄内翻足的必要且全面的信息，以便在治疗方案、依从性和支具使用方案方面做到清晰明了。相比之下，质量一般的信息可能会导致偏见和随访不佳。我们使用DISCERN工具客观评估了关于马蹄内翻足的在线健康信息。通过通用搜索引擎谷歌，我们对“马蹄内翻足”一词进行了布尔搜索。该研究仅纳入了提供马蹄内翻足健康信息的前50个网站。我们检查了334个链接，从中选取了50个。在分析过程中，由于内容重复排除了3个网站，剩下47个网站使用DISCERN工具进行检查。根据该工具，得分低于40%被评为“差”，40 - 79%为“一般”，至少80%为“好”，而总体质量按照类似标准被评为“低”“中”“高”. 在我们评估的网站中，40%（19个）网站的总体质量为“低”，28%（13个）为“中”，32%（15个）为“高”。6篇（13%）出版物显示出良好的可靠性；25篇（54%）显示出一般的可靠性，16篇（33%）不可靠。关于治疗选择信息的质量，44.7%（21个）为“好”，46.8%（22个）为“一般”，8.5%（4个）为“差”。我们得出结论，提供马蹄内翻足在线健康信息的网站质量需要显著提高，应着重采用一个普遍可接受的疾病信息模板。
