• Cesare Carlo Ferrari, Sebastiano Spampatti, Andrea Leotta, Stefano Rausei, Francesca Rovera, Luigi Boni, Davide Inversini, Giulio Carcano, Gianlorenzo Dionigi, and Renzo Dionigi.
• Department of Surgical Sciences and Human Morphology, Endocrine Surgery Research Center, University of Insubria, Varese, Italy.
• Int J Surg. 2013 Jan 1; 11 Suppl 1: S40-1.

BackgroundThis is a preliminary analysis of intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM)-related websites available to the general public with respect to thyroid surgery.MethodsFour key terms and/or phrases (neuromonitoring AND thyroid AND neck surgery, intraoperative neuromonitoring, intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring, IONM) were entered separately into the search engines Google.com, Yahoo.com and Bing.com. The first 50 results obtained for each search procedure were evaluated. Websites were evaluated for content quality using the validated DISCERN rating instrument. Readability was graded by the Flesch Reading Ease Score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.ResultsThe results were related to scientific publications in most cases (64%). A large percentage (59%) of the servers are located in the USA. The main language used is English (91%); only 19% of the websites are multilingual or in other languages. 58% of the sites were rated as excellent to good and 42% as fair to poor. The median Flesch Reading Ease Score was 49.6; the median Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level was 13.85.ConclusionsWorld Wide Web information about IONM in thyroid surgery is too specific and difficult and poorly accessible to the general public.Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd and Surgical Associates Ltd. All rights reserved.

8 keywords...

hide…