The Journal of hand surgery
-
As patients are more frequently referring to the Internet for information on their musculoskeletal problems, the readability and comprehensibility of these educational materials becomes increasingly more important to most of the lay public. In this study, we investigated the readability of the currently available web sites of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) that pertain to hand and wrist problems, to assess their usefulness as a source for patient information. ⋯ Our results suggest that the patient education materials found on the AAOS and ASSH web sites have readability scores that are higher than the recommended reading levels and thus may be too difficult to be understood by a substantial portion of the U.S. population.