Disparity in online health information in pediatric vs. adult surgical conditions.

BACKGROUND: Although the quality of online health information (OHI) for adult surgical conditions is well described, the availability of quality OHI for pediatric surgical conditions, and the comparison to that of adult surgical OHI, remains undefined.

METHODS: Medical and lay terms for 15 pediatric and 15 adult surgical conditions were searched using Google in English. The Health on the Net Foundation, a non-governmental OHI accreditation body, designates approval for quality websites. We compared the role of patient population while controlling for disease incidence (pediatric vs. adult), term complexity (medical vs. lay), and order (earlier vs. later listing of websites) on availability of quality OHI among the first 100 websites for each term.

RESULTS: Among the first 100 websites, the adjusted mean number of quality websites was 11.80 for pediatric vs. 17.92 for adult medical search terms, and 13.27 for pediatric vs. 18.20 for adult lay search terms (P < 0.05 for all). Term complexity did not affect quality, and earlier appearing results were more likely to be of high quality.

CONCLUSION: Availability of quality pediatric surgical OHI lags behind that of adult surgical OHI, even when controlling for disease incidence. These findings highlight the potential need for increased quality OHI in pediatric surgery.