Online Information on Lymphedema: Systematic Review of the Quality of Online Patient Resources

Abstract

The Internet has become a major source of health-related information for patients, yet the quality of online content is unregulated, leading to the potential for misinformation and patient distress. This study aims to assess the quality of online patient information on lymphedema. A search for the term “lymphedema” was conducted on the three most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing), identifying the first 100 relevant websites, yielding 300 websites in total. These websites were evaluated using the expanded Ensuring Quality Information for Patients (EQIP) instrument, which consists of 36 items. From 300 websites identified, 105 (35%) met the criteria for final analysis, after excluding duplicates, irrelevant sites, non-English content, sites requiring user accounts, and scientific publications targeting professionals. The median EQIP score of these sites was 22, indicating suboptimal quality based on the EQIP criteria. A significant number of sites (62.9%) did not mention surgical treatment as an option for lymphedema, and 75.2% failed to describe treatment risks. Additionally, 98.1% did not report quantitative risks. Our analysis using the EQIP tool revealed that the quality of online information about lymphedema is generally poor, largely due to the omission of key content elements such as treatment options, associated risks, and quantitative data.

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