Patients frequently consult the Internet in their quest for medical knowledge. During the COVID19 pandemic, this pattern became more pronounced. This research aims to evaluate how reliable resources for learning about robotic-assisted radical cystectomy are on the Internet. In the month of November 2021, the 3 most popular search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!) were used to search the Internet. Researchers used the terms “robotic cystectomy,” “robotic-assisted cystectomy,” and “robotic radical cystectomy” to find relevant articles. Each search engine’s top 25 results for each phrase were included. Any content found to be redundant, ad-supported, or behind a paywall was removed. Select online resources were categorized as academic, medical, commercial, or ambiguous. The DISCERN and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) assessment instruments, as well as the Health On the Net Foundation (HONcode) seal and reference presence, were used to determine the credibility of the information presented on the sites. The readability was measured using the Flesch Reading Ease Score. The 225 sites were broken down into categories such as “academic,” “physician,” “commercial,” and “unspecified,” with only 34 sites meeting the criteria for analysis. The average DISCERN score was 45.5±15.7, and the average JAMA score was 1.9±1.1. The greatest mean DISCERN and JAMA scores were found on commercial websites, with 64.7±8.7 and 3.6±0.5, respectively. The average JAMA rating for physician sites was much lower than for commercial sites (P<0.001). There were HONcode seals on 6 sites, and 10 listed references. The writing was tough to read because it was intended for a college graduate audience. Although the use of robots to perform radical cystectomy is expanding rapidly worldwide, there is still a lack of high-quality material available online. Health care professionals should make an effort to increase patients’ access to accurate and understandable patient education materials.
Source: auajournals.org/doi/full/10.1097/UPJ.0000000000000335
