Internet information on xerostomia: what should patients expect?

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

www.medicinenet.com (search xerostomia) was ranked maginally higher than several other sites offering good quality information on this subject.

Main

Delli K, Livas C et al. Oral Dis 2015; 21: 83–89

Two thirds of users search Goggle^™, 17.9% bing^™, and 11.4% YAHOO!^®. On average, only the first 8-10 results are opened. This study used the LIDA tool (www.minervation.com/lida-tool/), a free programme that can be used by developers of web sites to create good quality health information. The search strategy, using the above search engines and Ask^™, revealed 240 sites on xerostomia. This paper gives LIDA data on a sample of 50 such sites. Ranked equal third behind www.medicinenet.com (LIDA = 84), was en.wikipedia.org (LIDA = 76). The site with the lowest score was www.irishhealth.com (LIDA = 43). This bald assessment of this site would appear to be harsh. The investigators also graded each site using the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES). Generally the Web information on xerostomia was found to be written in a 'fairly difficult' to '(very) difficult' style. Of note, there appeared to be little association between the LIDA and FRES scores. FRES score for the text only of this abstract was scored as 'difficult'.