Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO, United States.
Department of Surgery, Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO, United States.
Hernia. 2022 Apr;26(2):581-587. doi: 10.1007/s10029-021-02375-y. Epub 2021 Feb 7.
Hernia repair remains one of the most common surgical procedures. Surgical mesh usage has been highlighted in the media due to recent lawsuits and recalls. Patients can read potentially biased information on the Internet and this can influence a patient's healthcare decisions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate search engine listings and respective website content of surgical mesh for hernia repair.
Websites evaluated were derived from four keyword searches targeting surgical mesh with Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Websites from the first two pages of each search were evaluated for content comprehensiveness.
The largest category of websites from search engine results was legal advertisements, accounting for 20% of all results. These websites also held the first position on every results page. Legal advertisements and blog/forum websites were the most skewed toward surgical mesh risks and complications vs. benefits. There was a reduction in advertisements in 2020 vs. 2018. The most comprehensive non-advertisement websites were found more frequently. Overall, only 44% of websites presented references and 50% cited supporting data. Finally, 46% of 'recommended search terms' displayed on the search engine results page had a risk, complication, or legal bias.
These results emphasize the challenges of using an Internet search engine to find comprehensive and appropriate information regarding surgical mesh. This manuscript underscores the importance for physicians to direct patients toward specific websites to mitigate their exposure to websites that are biased and not appropriate for patients searching for an accurate and comprehensive overview of surgical mesh.
疝修补术仍然是最常见的外科手术之一。由于最近的诉讼和召回，外科网片的使用已成为媒体关注的焦点。患者可以在互联网上阅读到可能存在偏见的信息，这可能会影响患者的医疗决策。本研究旨在评估疝修补用外科网片的搜索引擎列表和相应的网站内容。
通过在 Google、Yahoo 和 Bing 上进行四项针对外科网片的关键字搜索，评估了评估的网站。评估了每个搜索的前两页的网站内容的全面性。
搜索引擎结果中的最大类别是法律广告，占所有结果的 20%。这些网站也在每个结果页面上占据了首位。法律广告和博客/论坛网站对手术网片的风险和并发症的描述比其益处更有偏见。与 2018 年相比，2020 年的广告数量有所减少。最全面的非广告网站更容易被找到。总体而言，只有 44%的网站提供了参考文献，50%的网站引用了支持数据。最后，搜索引擎结果页面上显示的 46%的“推荐搜索词”带有风险、并发症或法律偏见。
这些结果强调了使用互联网搜索引擎查找关于外科网片的全面和适当信息所面临的挑战。本研究强调了医生引导患者访问特定网站的重要性，以减轻他们接触到存在偏见且不适合患者搜索外科网片的准确和全面概述的网站的风险。
