Abstract
BackgroundIt is not clear how prevalent Internet use among cardiopathic patients in Germany is and what impact it has on the health care utilisation. We measured the extent of Internet use among cardiopathic patients and examined the effects that Internet use has on users' knowledge about their cardiac disease, health care matters and their use of the health care system.MethodsWe conducted a prospective survey among 255 cardiopathic patients at a German university hospital.ResultsForty seven respondents (18 %) used the internet and 8,8 % (n = 23) went online more than 20 hours per month. The most frequent reason for not using the internet was disinterest (52,3 %). Fourteen patients (5,4 %) searched for specific disease-related information and valued the retrieved information on an analogous scale (1 = not relevant, 5 = very relevant) on median with 4,0. Internet use is age and education dependent. Only 36 (14,1 %) respondents found the internet useful, whereas the vast majority would not use it. Electronic scheduling for ambulatory visits or postoperative telemedical monitoring were rather disapproved.ConclusionWe conclude that Internet use is infrequent among our study population and the search for relevant health and disease related information is not well established.
Highlights
It is not clear how prevalent Internet use among cardiopathic patients in Germany is and what impact it has on the health care utilisation
Several international studies suggested that more than half and as much as 80 % of adults with Internet access use it for health care purposes [4,10,13]
Current estimates suggest that an increasing number of people access the World Wide Web and at least 2 % out of more than 3 billion websites are assessed to be health related [1,10]
Summary
It is not clear how prevalent Internet use among cardiopathic patients in Germany is and what impact it has on the health care utilisation. We measured the extent of Internet use among cardiopathic patients and examined the effects that Internet use has on users' knowledge about their cardiac disease, health care matters and their use of the health care system. Several international studies suggested that more than half and as much as 80 % of adults with Internet access use it for health care purposes [4,10,13]. These estimates have been widely distributed and frequently form the context for discussions among the media and other of the role of the Internet in health care.
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