Quality of Online Information in Arabic for Patient Education Regarding Cancer Chemotherapy

Despite being a significant educational resource for health-related information, the available data on the Internet lack quality control, which can lead to misconceptions and incorrect adoption of health interventions. Patients with cancer may rely on this information regarding treatment options, side effects, and precautions. This study aimed to evaluate the online Arabic content related to cancer medications, including chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and biological therapy. A search was conducted using the Google search engine with the translated Arabic keywords of "cancer medications," "cancer treatment," "targeted therapy for the treatment of cancer," "targeted therapy," "biologic therapy for cancer," and "chemotherapy medications." The first four search result pages were screened; 69 websites met the inclusion criteria. Two authors performed a quality assessment using the DISCERN instrument. The average scores on the DISCERN tool for each website ranged from 22 to 62.5. The websites were categorized as excellent, good, fair, poor, or very poor. The results showed that 37% of the websites were rated as fair, 27.5% as good, 24.6% as poor, and 10.1% as very poor. Two-thirds of all included websites rated as either fair or good, whereas the remaining websites were rated as poor or very poor, with no websites having excellent ratings. We recommend that website owners and health experts, especially pharmacists, cooperate to deliver reliable health-related information.