Internet Websites for Chest Pain Symptoms Demonstrate Highly Variable Content and Quality

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Medical Communication
• Patient Education

Background:

• Chest pain is a prevalent symptom with diverse causes, necessitating reliable patient information.
• Assessing online resources for chest pain is crucial for patient understanding and timely care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the content, quality, and readability of websites detailing chest pain symptoms.
• To determine the reliability and accessibility of online chest pain information for patients.

Main Methods:

• Searched five search engines for "chest pain," analyzing the top 30 results per engine.
• Excluded diagnosis-driven, physician-focused, and non-informational websites.
• Assessed content, DISCERN, HONcode, JAMA benchmarks, readability, LIDA (accessibility, usability, reliability), and Alexa popularity.

Main Results:

• Most sites covered cardiac/noncardiac causes (96%/81%) and emergency care guidance (85%).
• Limited information on diagnostic tests (51%), treatments (22%), and delayed treatment consequences (11%).
• Median DISCERN score indicated low-medium quality; only 11% met JAMA criteria; readability was often above 9th grade; LIDA scores showed medium accessibility/usability but low reliability.

Conclusions:

• Online chest pain resources exhibit significant variability in content and quality.
• Many patient-facing websites are unreliable and difficult to read, posing challenges for individuals with low health literacy.