An Assessment of the Quality of CT Radiation Dose Information on the Internet.

OBJECTIVES

Our goal was to ascertain the quality of health information related to CT radiation exposure using a simulated Internet search and from incident information that may be available during day-to-day Internet usage.

METHODS

We entered 14 terms relating to information on CT dose into the most commonly used Internet search engine and analyzed the first 100 web page results for each. A Rich Search Site (RSS) feed search was also used to evaluate incidental information over a 12-week period in 2014. Each web page was classified as being "completely accurate," "somewhat accurate," or "inaccurate."

RESULTS

Of 1,400 web pages, 290 were relevant and accessible. We deemed 12.8% of these pages as inaccurate and 67.2% of pages as completely accurate. The highest proportion of web pages was from media sources, which, along with discussion forums, commercial websites, and blogs, were found to have proportionally the largest amount of inaccurate information. Of 1,943 posts, 136 (7.0%) identified by the RSS were relevant, 9.6% were deemed inaccurate, and only 29.9% were deemed completely accurate. The results of our simulated query highlight the importance of public education regarding Internet usage when researching topics relating to radiation exposure associated with CT.