O-201 - QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF PATIENT INFORMATION ON ABDOMINAL AORTIC ANEURYSM REPAIR ON THE INTERNET USING THE MODIFIED 'ENSURING QUALITY INFORMATION FOR PATIENTS' TOOL.

TOPIC:
Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms
AUTHORS:
Budge J. (St George's Hospital ~ London ~ United Kingdom) , Lenti L. (St George's Hospital ~ London ~ United Kingdom) , Azhar B. (St George's Hospital ~ London ~ United Kingdom) , Wafi A. (St George's Hospital ~ London ~ United Kingdom) , Selway W. (St George's Hospital ~ London ~ United Kingdom) , Loftus I. (St George's Hospital ~ London ~ United Kingdom) , Holt P. (St George's Hospital ~ London ~ United Kingdom)
Introduction:
The internet is a major source of medical information for patients. However, little is known about the quality of websites regarding Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) repair. The ensuring quality information for patients (EQIP) tool, a 36-point checklist, has been used extensively in other fields of medicine to assess online patient material. The EQIP tool has been validated to assess the content, identification and structure of patient material and assign an overall score. The EQIP tool has never been used in vascular surgery and this study aims to assess the quality of patient literature on AAA repair on the internet.
Methods:
The 12 most used search terms relating to AAA repair where identified using Google trends, with the first 10 pages of websites retrieved for each search term. After removal of duplicates and application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, websites were EQIP scored. The presence of accurate mortality, complication rates and emergency guidance was also recorded. The ranking of each page by the search engine was collected, with a ranking of one representing the first displayed link by the search engine.
Results:
1297 viable websites were identified with 235 (18%) eligible for analysis after removal of duplicates and the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The median EQIP score for all websites was 18 (IQR 14-21). 78% of the websites originated in the USA with a median EQIP score of 17, while 13% came from the UK with a median score of 22. Only 18% of the websites provided mortality rates, 12% complication rates and 20% emergency guidance. As can be seen in Figure 1 no clear correlation of search engine ranking and EQIP score could be ascertained.
Conclusion:
The quality of most websites concerning AAA repair is low, which is in keeping with other studies using EQIP within other surgical and medical fields. We have also shown that search engine ranking is not be a reliable measure of the quality of patient information material. Thus, health practitioners should be aware of this issue and the whereabouts of high-quality material to which patients can be directed.
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