title: Information about oral cancer on the Internet: our patients cannot understand it.
abstract: Although information about cancer on the Internet can be beneficial to patients and physicians, to our knowledge, comprehension by patients has not been investigated. We used 3 search engines to select websites on oral cancer then assessed their readability using the Flesch-Kinkaid Reading Grade Level, Flesch Reading Ease Score, Gunning Fog Index, Coleman-Liau Index, Automated Readability Index, and the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook Index (SMOG). The mean scores for readability were within the range of "difficult to read" (FRES=36.04 (14.87)) with high educational requirements (FKRGL=11.44 (3.27)). This could hamper comprehension and is particularly worrying given the high percentage of people who have poor levels of literacy.
authors.affiliation: Stomatology Department, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Galician Health Service, EOXI Lugo, Cervo e Monforte de Lemos, Lugo, Spain.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Varela-Centelles
authors.affiliation: Stomatology Department, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ledesma-Ludi
authors.affiliation: Stomatology Department, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Seoane-Romero
authors.affiliation: Stomatology Department, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Electronic address: juanmanuel.seoane@usc.es.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Seoane
mesh_terms: D032882:Comprehension; D054626:Consumer Health Information; D004522:Educational Status; D057220:Health Literacy; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D009062:Mouth Neoplasms; D011932:Reading; D057386:Search Engine
keywords: Internet; Oral cancer; Patient education; Readability