Articles about Eye Health and Disease 2003
 

Lasik Complications and the Internet: Is the public being misled?

(From Fahey DK, Weinberg J, J Med Internet Res. 2003;5:e2.)

A recent study has concluded that there is a lack of comprehensive, balanced and well-referenced information on the complications of Lasik surgery available on the Internet. The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, evaluated 21 Web sites to assess the quantity and quality of online information on Lasik complications that is available to prospective patients.

Dr. Fahey, who co-authored the study, said he decided to conduct the study when a more informal evaluation of Lasik -related Web sites left him uneasy over the quality of information he found. “I came across Web sites that made me realize that anybody could write anything they want. I could see this becoming a problem down the line as patients with complications would claim that the risks were not made clear on the Web site,” he said.

The web sites were evaluated on content quality, authorship and technical aspects of the information on the complications of Lasik. 21 Web sites were evaluated between July 16 and July 22, 2002. He included the first 17 English-language sites that appeared when the word Lasik was searched for with the Google search engine (www.google.com), and the first four United Kingdom sites that appeared using the same keyword, but with the Yahoo search engine (www.yahoo.com) limited to U.K. sites. The searches returned 150,000 hits and 1,010 hits, respectively, but he chose to limit his evaluation to the first 21 English-language sites because it was felt that most English-speaking potential Lasik customers would not extend their search beyond this number of sites. The Web sites included 16 from North America, four from the United Kingdom and one from India. He disregarded sites that provided only contact information for Lasik surgeons.

Results: The results show that 16 of the 21 Web sites mentioned the potential complications of Lasik. While on the whole the U.S. Web sites mentioned complications more than the U.K. sites did, the difference was not statistically significant.

Of the 16 sites that had information on complications, the author was clearly identified in five (31%), the content was referenced in two (12.5%) and evidence of the information having been updated was seen in two (12.5%).

Most of the sites scored well on the quality of headings, subheadings and footers, indicating that Dr. Fahey thought they would aid the visitor’s navigation through the site.

This study’s findings support recent work at the Southern California College of Optometry, which looked at 96 Web sites and rated 46% of them “minimally informative,” 26% “markedly informative” and 28% “moderately informative.”

The authors concluded that, “The poor quality of the information represents a negligent omission, as the public are being misled into believing that LASIK is without risk. This may lead to liability cases by patients with complications whose decision to have LASIK was based on the information they read on the Web site.”

To combat the problem of substandard information, it was suggested that a possible solution is to have an independent body set up specifically to evaluate the content of ophthalmologic Web sites.

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