Evidence-Based Medicine
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 7, 2017; 23(9): 1676-1696
Published online Mar 7, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i9.1676
Inflammatory bowel disease: An evaluation of health information on the internet
Samy A Azer, Thekra I AlOlayan, Malak A AlGhamdi, Malak A AlSanea
Samy A Azer, Thekra I AlOlayan, Malak A AlGhamdi, Malak A AlSanea, Curriculum Development and Research Unit, Medical Education Department, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh 11461, Saudi Arabia
Author contributions: Azer SA participated in the study design and development and analysis and interpretation of data, construction of figures and tables and writing the manuscript; AlOlayan TI, AlGhamdi MA and AlSanea MA participated in the data collection, data analysis, interpretation of data, construction of tables, and review of the manuscript.
Supported by the College of Medicine Research Center, Deanship of Scientific Research, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Institutional review board statement: The Institutional Review Boar, College of Medicine King Saud University, has approved the project and the approval number: F06/2014.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Samy A Azer, Professor, Curriculum Development and Research Unit, Medical Education Department, College of Medicine, King Saud University, PO Box 2925, Riyadh 11461, Saudi Arabia. azer2000@optusnet.com.au
Telephone: +966-11-4699178 Fax: +966-11-4699174
Received: October 28, 2016
Peer-review started: November 2, 2016
First decision: December 19, 2016
Revised: December 29, 2016
Accepted: February 16, 2017
Article in press: February 17, 2017
Published online: March 7, 2017
Processing time: 128 Days and 20.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: This is a comprehensive study analyzing the quality and accuracy of content and the readability level of websites in the English language on inflammatory bowel disease dedicated to the public. Two standardized instruments were used in assessing quality and accuracy and two methods were used in calculating readability level. The study showed variability in scores and the readability levels of most websites were above that for the public. Based on evidence, the study highlights the need for improving online patient education.