• Lin Chen, Dominic Orosa, Gaeun Ahn, Jonathan Putnam, Habib Layoun, Hafiz Umair Saddiqui, Miza Salim Hammoud, Rashed Mahboubi, Dean Schraufnagel, and Alejandro Bribriesco.
• Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Heart Vascular and Thoracic Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio. Electronic address: lxc451@case.edu.
• J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. 2024 May 1; 167 (5): 16541656.e51654-1656.e5.

ObjectivePatients are increasingly using the internet to obtain health care information. US News and World Report Best Hospital rankings received more than 103 million views in 2021. Considering 21% of thoracic surgery patients are minorities, 27.9% are in the bottom quartile of household income, and 70% have Medicare/Medicaid or no insurance, online patient educational materials (PEMs) should be accessible and written at a level easily understood by majority of patients. We performed a comprehensive analysis of readability of websites containing patient-centered resources across all adult thoracic surgery areas.MethodsOnline PEMs on thoracic surgical procedures were collected from top 50 hospitals for pulmonology and lung surgery ranked by US News and World Report Best Hospital as of December 1, 2021. Text pertaining to thoracic surgical procedures was collected and divided into 4 procedural genres: esophageal, lung, transplant procedures, and other. Texts were analyzed using OleanderSoftware's Readability Suite through the Raygor readability test.ResultsThree hundred seventy-two articles met criteria for analysis. Websites were difficult to read; mean (standard deviation) readability score for all content required a 13.9 (3.6) grade level for comprehension. The mean (standard deviation) readability for esophageal, lung, lung transplant, and other surgeries were 14.5 (3.6), 13.1 (3.6), 11.5 (3.9), and 13.4 (3.7), respectively.ConclusionsOnline PEMs required at least a college reading level to comprehend, well exceeding the sixth-grade level recommended by the American Medical Association. As digital health becomes increasingly relevant, improving the readability of online PEMs in adult cardiac surgery will facilitate equitable access to high-quality care.Copyright © 2024 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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