Introduction: Studies have shown that approximately 50% of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) use the internet to gather IBD-specific information. Its use has been positively linked with disease activity and severity. Patient education also improves satisfaction and participation with treatment. The primary aim of our study was to evaluate the accuracy, comprehensiveness, and readability of online patient education resources for IBD.
Methods: We performed a cross-sectional analysis of online patient educational resources for IBD using Google in June 2022. We used the web tool ‘Isearchfrom.com’ to search the terms “Inflammatory bowel disease” and “IBD blog”. This tool disables Google’s personalized results function and allows the user to perform a Google search through different cities in the United States (US). We performed online searches from two wealthiest and poorest cities and two largest and smallest cities from four major US regions to determine if variations existed in the availability of online resources. The top 10 Google websites, blogs and videos for the searches from each of the 16 cities were included and independently reviewed. Resources were graded based on fulfilment of specific criteria regarding different aspects of IBD. The readability of each website and blog was assessed using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.
Results: There was no difference in the search results of websites, blogs, or videos between the 16 cities. Three websites were from hospital/academic affiliated sites and seven were from non-hospital/academic affiliated sites (titled “other” in Table 1). No website, blog or video met 100% of the criteria. Average percentage of total IBD criteria mentioned was 72% for academic websites, 83% for other websites, 65% for blogs, and 49% for videos. IBD definition, clinical manifestations, and use of immunosuppressive medications were mentioned most among the resources (87%). Coagulopathy, following with a gastroenterologist, and health maintenance were the least mentioned criteria (30-40%). 75% of the websites and blogs exceeded the recommended reading level of 6th grade for patient education materials by the National Institute of Health.
Discussion: The online patient education materials were accurate but varied in their comprehensiveness. The majority of patient material exceeded the recommended readability. It is important for clinicians to be familiar with these patient resources and guide patients accordingly.
