Evaluating the Source and Content of Internet Information Regarding DeQuervain's Tenosynovitis

Introduction Patients are increasingly relying on the internet for information about their medical diagnoses, but there is little regulation on the content of these websites. The purpose of this study was to investigate the quality of the informational content available on the internet regarding DeQuervain's tenosynovitis.  Methods The search phrasing "'DeQuervain' OR 'DeQuervain's' OR 'Radial styloid tenosynovitis' OR 'DeQuervain's synovitis' OR 'Wrist tendonitis'" was entered into the five most commonly used search engines, and the first 50 universal resource locators (URLs) were recorded, including sponsored sites. Duplicate sites and URLs linking to other search engines were removed, yielding a roster of 109 websites that form the basis for this study. Each site was graded by two authors and scored based on a previously published information evaluation protocol regarding informational content. A third individual resolved any conflict before analysis. The sum of these scores resulted in an "Informational Score" on a scale from 0 to 100. Results Sixty-six (60.6%) of the websites evaluated were authored by an academic institution or a physician, and these all provided conventional information. Thirty-two (29.4%) of the sites were commercial sites or sold commercial products. The remaining 11 websites (10.1%) had nonphysician, unidentified, or lay authorship. The mean informational score for all sites was 46.7 out of a maximum of 100 points. The mean score of the academic or physician-authored websites was 53.3 out of 100 points, compared to 36.7 out of 100 for the remainder of the sites, which was significantly different. The mean score for the 14 sponsored websites was 11.6 out of 100. Discussion/conclusion We concluded that internet information on DeQuervain's tenosynovitis is of poor quality and incomplete. Patients looking for information about DeQuervain's tenosynovitis on the internet should be advised to focus on academic- and physician-authored sites in order to avoid commercial bias and misleading information.