Open access World Wide Web resources on upper and lower respiratory tract infections.
BACKGROUND
Respiratory tract infections represent a common problem in everyday practice. The development of the World Wide Web can assist clinicians and other medical care professionals in finding useful information on various clinical conditions, including upper and lower respiratory tract infections.


METHODS
To identify websites containing information for health care professionals on upper and lower respiratory tract infections, we searched popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo. We also reviewed the sites of major institutions as well as relevant organisations and professional societies and associations. Only those sites that included material in the English language, were open access and developed by a governmental and/or academic institution, or a national or international professional society or associations were included.


RESULTS
We selected 106 sites that provide information on upper respiratory tract infections and 67 sites that provide information on lower respiratory tract infections.


CONCLUSIONS
We tried to identify freely available Internet resources with relevant information on upper and lower respiratory tract infections. We believe that the list of relevant World Wide Web resources we generated may be useful as an educational tool for clinicians and trainees.
Fragoulis
K N
KN
Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences (AIBS), Athens, Greece.
Korbila
I P
IP
Dimopoulos
G
G
Falagas
M E
ME
D022126:Access to Information; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D012141:Respiratory Tract Infections / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy