Information for surgical patients: implications of the World Wide Web

To sample the amount and scope of information available on the internet about three common surgical conditions, identify the sources, and to examine the relevance of the web to the surgical community.

Internet search.

General hospital, Republic of Ireland.

Three arbitrarily chosen conditions were sought--varicose veins, inguinal hernia, and gallstones. Four commonly used search engines--Yahoo, Altavista, Excite and Lycos, were used to search worldwide, and then sites restricted to the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Quality and quantity of information available.

All four search engines retrieved patient-orientated information on the three conditions. The sites accessed from the web page matches generally presented a comprehensive summary of the condition including aetiology, risk factors and clinical features, but gave variable amounts of information on treatment options, surgical complications, comparisons between treatments, and expected outcomes. Online health magazines provided most of the information sites.

The internet offers easily-accessible patient-orientated information. Surgeons should make more use of it to satisfy patients' increasing need for information.