title: Evaluating patient education material regarding unicompartmental knee arthroplasty.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Variability in quality and accuracy of information has been well documented in other orthopedic procedures. Given the growing role of the Internet in patient education, it is important to assess the quality of material provided. The purpose of this study was to evaluate online patient education materials regarding unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA).
  
  
  METHODS
  The first 50 websites generated from a search of the term, partial knee replacement, using three search engines, Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, were analyzed for quality, content, and authorship. Categorical data between the three search engines were compared using the Freeman-Halton extension for the Fisher's exact test. Fisher's exact test was used to compare categorical data between the search terms partial knee replacement and unicompartmental knee arthroplasty.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most websites mentioned benefits of UKA (69%) but only a minority (39%) mentioned risks. A more technical search term, unicompartmental knee arthroplasty, yielded fewer websites authored by manufacturers/industry and miscellaneous sources (p=0.018 and p=0.039, respectively), more mentions of risks (p=0.0014), and more references to peer-reviewed literature (p=0.0026).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Overall, online information related to UKA is of questionable quality and may be geared more towards attracting patients than providing high-quality information.
authors.affiliation: Boston University School of Medicine, 72 East Concord St, Boston, MA 02118, USA. Electronic address: kevwong@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: Boston University School of Medicine, 72 East Concord St, Boston, MA 02118, USA. Electronic address: rohith@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Rohith
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mohan
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco, 521 Parnassus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94117, USA. Electronic address: paulyi88@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Paul H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco, 521 Parnassus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94117, USA. Electronic address: erik.hansen@ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Erik N
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Hansen
mesh_terms: D019645:Arthroplasty, Replacement, Knee; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D057386:Search Engine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013664:Teaching Materials
keywords: Patient education; Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty