Quality and Accuracy of Cervical Radiculopathy-Specific Information on the Internet: A Cross Sectional Analysis.

STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the quality and accuracy of the content surrounding cervical radiculopathy available on the internet. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Those experiencing cervical radiculopathy and their families are increasingly browsing the world wide web for medical information. As the information offered is likely to influence their health care choices, spine care providers must understand the quality and accuracy of that information. METHODS Independent searches were conducted on the three most commonly accessed search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) using the keyword "cervical radiculopathy". The searches were performed on June 28th, 2019. The top 50 sites from each search engines were reviewed. The websites were evaluated using quality, accuracy and usability markers. RESULTS 77 unique websites were analyzed. 54.5% were physician or medical group professional sites, 20.8% as non-physician, 10.4% as unidentified, 7.8% as academics and 6.5% were commercial. Accuracy ranged from less than 25% to more than 75% were recorded with a mean accuracy of 3.5 signifying 50-75% agreement. Overall, website categories had a significant effect on Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) score, content quality, accuracy, total summary scores, distraction index, reading ease and grade level (p < 0.05). Academic sites had the highest mean quality content, accuracy and total summary scores. Four of the top five websites with the highest total summary scores were physician driven. On average, Health on the Net code (HONcode) certified websites had lower grade level readability with greater reading ease and higher DISCERN and JAMA scores than un-certified sites (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Despite the wide number of sources available, the quality, accuracy, pertinence and intelligibility of the information remains highly variable. Clinicians treating patients with cervical radiculopathy should direct them to verifiable sites with regulated information and, where possible, contribute high quality information to those sites.Level of Evidence: 4.