Evaluation of quality and reliability of websites about orthognathic surgery using Google Trends™ application

Abstract

Objectives: Orthognathic surgery is the only treatment option for some cases in orthodontics. Two main goals were aimed in this study. The first goal was to determine the top three keywords that Google searchers look for “orthognathic surgery” using the Google Trends™ application. The second was to assess the quality and reliability of the webpages yielded by searching those four keywords on Google. Materials and Methods: Google Trends was searched using the keyword “Orthognathic Surgery.” Then, Google was searched using keywords: “Orthognathic surgery” and the other first three keywords. An oral surgeon and an orthodontist analyzed the quality and reliability of the websites using the DISCERN assessment tool. Results: The correlation between evaluators was low. Forty-six of the 70 websites were the websites of different oral and maxillofacial clinics and orthodontic clinics. The percentage of websites was 11% for personal doctor websites, 10% for academic journals, 7% for institutes, 6% for orthodontic clinics, and 1.4% for dental clinics. Overall rating scores of the websites for researchers were 2.41±1.35 for oral surgeon and 1.99±1.49 for orthodontist. Conclusions: The reliability and quality of the information in all of the websites was very low. The data on the websites did not have any scientific review processes such as review-peer review.