Assessing the quality of online information on glaucoma procedures

To investigate the quality of information related to glaucoma procedures found online using 2 different assessment tools.

Cross-sectional survey of 100 web sites found via Google search engine.

The terms "peripheral iridotomy" and "trabeculectomy" along with synonymous keywords were inputted into Google's search engine. The first 50 functional websites for each term were assessed by 2 independent raters using the DISCERN instrument as well as a quality assessment tool by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Statistical analysis included an evaluation of intra-rater reproducibility and interclass correlation between the 2 scales.

(i) Quality of web site content based on DISCERN and JAMA scores, (ii) quality of web site based on categorization of web site (iii), intra-rater reproducibility of each scale, and (iv) interclass correlation between the 2 rating scales.

Only 22% of the web sites for peripheral iridotomy and 34% of the web sites for trabeculectomy met all the criteria for JAMA's quality assessment. The mean DISCERN scores for peripheral iridotomy and trabeculectomy were 44 and 43.7, respectively, indicating poor quality. For the DISCERN scale, level of agreement between raters for each question ranged from κ = 0.550 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.700-1.026) to κ = 0.884 (95% CI 0.751-1.017). For the JAMA 4 scale, level of agreement for each question ranged from κ = 0.874 (95% CI 0.734-1.01) to κ = 1.00.

Our study indicates that information found online for two common ophthalmic procedures is of variable and poor quality. Thus, patients may be receiving misinformation online and better measures need to be implemented to avoid the dissemination of low-quality health information.