1 Department of Radiology, Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, 132 S 10th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107.
2 Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA.
AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2018 Jul;211(1):W42-W46. doi: 10.2214/AJR.17.19042. Epub 2018 Apr 30.
Following the findings of the National Lung Screening Trial, several national societies from multiple disciplines have endorsed the use of low-dose chest CT to screen for lung cancer. Online patient education materials are an important tool to disseminate information to the general public regarding the proven health benefits of lung cancer screening. This study aims to evaluate the reading level at which these materials related to lung cancer screening are written.
The four terms "pulmonary nodule," "radiation," "low-dose CT," and "lung cancer screening" were searched on Google, and the first 20 online resources for each term were downloaded, converted into plain text, and analyzed using 10 well-established readability scales. If the websites were not written specifically for patients, they were excluded.
The 80 articles were written at a 12.6 ± 2.7 (mean ± SD) grade level, with grade levels ranging from 4.0 to 19.0. Of the 80 articles, 62.5% required a high school education to comprehend, and 22.6% required a college degree or higher (≥ 16th grade) to comprehend. Only 2.5% of the analyzed articles adhered to the recommendations of the National Institutes of Health and American Medical Association that patient education materials be written at a 3rd- to 7th-grade reading level.
Commonly visited online lung cancer screening-related patient education materials are written at a level beyond the general patient population's ability to comprehend and may be contributing to a knowledge gap that is inhibiting patients from improving their health literacy.
继国家肺癌筛查试验的研究结果公布后，多个来自不同学科的国家学会都支持使用低剂量胸部 CT 对肺癌进行筛查。在线患者教育材料是向公众传播有关肺癌筛查已证实的健康益处的重要工具。本研究旨在评估这些与肺癌筛查相关的材料的阅读水平。
在谷歌上搜索“肺结节”“辐射”“低剂量 CT”和“肺癌筛查”这四个术语，下载每个术语的前 20 个在线资源，将其转换为纯文本，并使用 10 种成熟的可读性量表进行分析。如果网站不是专门为患者编写的，则将其排除。
80 篇文章的阅读水平为 12.6±2.7（平均值±标准差），阅读水平范围为 4.0 至 19.0。在 80 篇文章中，需要高中教育水平才能理解的占 62.5%，需要大学学历或更高学历（≥16 年级）才能理解的占 22.6%。只有 2.5%的分析文章符合美国国立卫生研究院和美国医学协会的建议，即患者教育材料的编写应达到 3 至 7 年级的阅读水平。
访问量较大的在线肺癌筛查相关患者教育材料的编写水平超出了一般患者群体的理解能力，可能导致知识差距，从而阻碍患者提高健康素养。
