Vargas Christina R, Chuang Danielle J, Lee Bernard T
From the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
Ann Plast Surg. 2016 Jan;77(1):110-4. doi: 10.1097/SAP.0000000000000340.
As more patients use Internet resources for health information, there is increasing interest in evaluating the readability of available online materials. The National Institutes of Health and American Medical Association recommend that patient educational content be written at a sixth-grade reading level. This study evaluates the most popular online resources for information about mastopexy relative to average adult literacy in the United States.
The 12 most popular sites returned by the largest Internet search engine were identified using the search term "breast lift surgery." Relevant articles from the main sites were downloaded and formatted into text documents. Pictures, captions, links, and references were excluded. The readability of these 100 articles was analyzed overall and subsequently by site using 10 established readability tests. Subgroup analysis was performed for articles discussing the benefits of surgery and those focusing on risks.
The overall average readability of online patient information was 13.3 (range, 11.1-15). There was a range of average readability scores overall across the 12 sites from 8.9 to 16.1, suggesting that some may be more appropriate than others for patient demographics with different health literacy levels. Subgroup analysis revealed that articles discussing the risks of mastopexy were significantly harder to read (mean, 14.1) than articles about benefits (11.6).
Patient-directed articles from the most popular online resources for mastopexy information are uniformly above the recommended reading level and likely too difficult to be understood by a large number of patients in the United States.
随着越来越多的患者使用互联网资源获取健康信息，人们对评估现有在线材料的可读性越来越感兴趣。美国国立卫生研究院和美国医学协会建议，患者教育内容应以六年级阅读水平编写。本研究评估了美国关于乳房提升术信息的最受欢迎的在线资源相对于平均成人识字水平的情况。
使用搜索词“乳房提升手术”确定最大的互联网搜索引擎返回的12个最受欢迎的网站。从主要网站下载相关文章并格式化为文本文件。排除图片、标题、链接和参考文献。使用10种既定的可读性测试对这100篇文章的可读性进行整体分析，随后按网站进行分析。对讨论手术益处的文章和关注风险的文章进行亚组分析。
在线患者信息的总体平均可读性为13.3（范围为11.1 - 15）。12个网站的总体平均可读性得分范围为8.9至16.1，这表明对于不同健康素养水平的患者群体，有些网站可能比其他网站更合适。亚组分析显示，讨论乳房提升术风险的文章（平均为14.1）比关于益处的文章（11.6）更难阅读。
来自最受欢迎的乳房提升术信息在线资源的面向患者的文章均高于推荐的阅读水平，可能对美国大量患者来说太难理解。
