Abstract
BackgroundThe internet is an increasingly relevant source of health information. We aimed to assess the quality of German dentists’ websites on periodontitis, hypothesizing that it was significantly associated with a number of practice-specific parameters.MethodsWe searched four electronic search engines and included pages which were freely accessible, posted by a dental practice in Germany, and mentioned periodontal disease/therapy. Websites were assessed for (1) technical and functional aspects, (2) generic quality and risk of bias, (3) disease-specific information. For 1 and 2, validated tools (LIDA/DISCERN) were used for assessment. For 3, we developed a criterion catalogue encompassing items on etiologic and prognostic factors for periodontitis, the diagnostic and treatment process, and the generic chance of tooth retention in periodontitis patients. Inter- and intra-rater reliabilities were largely moderate. Generalized linear modeling was used to assess the association between the information quality (measured as % of maximally available scores) and practice-specific characteristics.ResultsSeventy-one websites were included. Technical and functional aspects were reported in significantly higher quality (median: 71%, 25/75th percentiles: 67/79%) than all other aspects (p < 0.05). Generic risk of bias and most disease-specific aspects showed significantly lower reporting quality (median range was 0–40%), with poorest reporting for prognostic factors (9;0/27%), diagnostic process (0;0/33%) and chances of tooth retention (0;0/2%). We found none of the practice-specific parameters to have significant impact on the overall quality of the websites.ConclusionsMost German dentists’ websites on periodontitis are not fully trustworthy and relevant information are not or insufficiently considered. There is great need to improve the information quality from such websites at least with regards to periodontitis.
Highlights
The internet is an increasingly relevant source of health information
The technical and functional aspects were found to be reported in significantly higher quality than all other aspects (p < 0.05/Wilcoxon)
The internet is an increasingly relevant source of health information for patients, mainly as (a) patients are increasingly engaged in their health and (b) seeking such information online is easy and often comes at no costs at all
Summary
We aimed to assess the quality of German dentists’ websites on periodontitis, hypothesizing that it was significantly associated with a number of practice-specific parameters. Around 50% of the population has access to the internet; this share increases to 90% or above in most industrialized countries [1]. The LIDA and the DISCERN instrument, for example, allow users to systematically evaluate a website’s accessibility, usability, reliability and generic quality of information [4, 5]. Such tools have been successfully applied to evaluate the quality of information of websites on surgery or endocrinology [6, 7]. Similar generic instruments have been applied to judge the quality of information of websites on periodontitis, assessing for example the currency of the website and the justifiability and transparency of the information provided [8], finding the quality of information provided to be rather poor
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