• E P de Souza Neto, S Grousson, F Duflo, S Gandreau, D Rousson, C Cornu, C Mottolese, J-C Froment, and F Dailler.
• Service d'anesthésie réanimation, hôpital neurologique Pierre-Wertheimer, hospices civils de Lyon, groupement hospitalier Est, 59 boulevard Pinel, Bron cedex, France.
• Ann Fr Anesth Reanim. 2010 Oct 1; 29 (10): 704-9.

IntroductionWe designed written information concerning two medical imaging techniques: the computed tomography scanner and the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and we evaluated the quality of the information in particular its readability.MethodsWritten information concerning scanner and MRI were elaborate starting from a reference frame based on a lexicon of the good practices. The written information sheets were initially reviewed by eight doctors, 45 nurses and by 26 couples of parents of hospitalized children, and finally by the communication and juridical services of our hospital. They were asked to improve the lexico-syntactic readability in order to increase the comprehension of the written information. Seventy-two couples of parents of hospitalized children who had not taken part of the protocol before evaluated the final version of the documents. The quality of the documents was evaluated using the scores of readability of Flesch and the Flesch-Kincaid, and a questionnaire of comprehension, managed before and after the delivery of written information.ResultsA total of 144 persons participated in the study. The number of right answers after reading written information increased by 38 % and by 35 % for the scanner and MRI information's respectively. Flesch and Flesch-Kincaid scores were not improved in the revised version of the written information compared to the first version.ConclusionAlthough readability scores for information sheets were low, our results suggest that they brought information, which contributed to a better understanding of these two medical imaging techniques by parents.Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

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