Quality and Accessibility of Obstetric Anal Sphincter Injury Online Patient Resources.

Abstract

Importance: No study has evaluated the health information available on the internet regarding obstetric anal sphincter injury.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the quality and accessibility of information on the internet for patients regarding obstetric anal sphincter injury.

Study design: This cross-sectional study analyzed online obstetric anal sphincter injury health information through a Google search, collecting the top 20 websites for 9 medical and lay terms. Quality was evaluated using the DISCERN score and the Journal of the American Medical Association benchmark criteria. Reading level was determined using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. Mean DISCERN scores were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis test.

Results: One hundred eleven unique websites were identified; 46.8% (n = 52) were directed toward medical professionals, and 9% (n = 10) were for law firms or e-commerce sites. Of the patient-facing websites, 24.3% (n = 27) were from health organizations outside of the United States. The DISCERN scores ranged from 16 to 77. Only 18% of websites met all 4 benchmark criteria; 10.8% (n = 12) of websites were inaccessible without subscriptions to journals or databases.

Conclusions: Obstetric anal sphincter injury health information online is of generally high quality, but primarily for medical professionals. Terms like "anal sphincter injury" required a 15th-grade reading level. While some terms yielded more patient-facing information, their reading levels remained above recommended levels for patients. This study highlights the paucity of broadly-accessible patient-facing obstetric anal sphincter injury resources on the internet because of variable quality, inability to perform credibility assessment, and physical and readability accessibility barriers.