ArticleJournal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education2017
The Content and Quality of Health Information on the Internet for Patients and Families on Adult Kidney Cancer.
Article in Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of internet-based information for individuals with Raynaud's phenomenon and patients with systemic sclerosis.Clinical rheumatology · 2020Pooled it
- Nationwide evaluation of readability, quality, and cultural sensitivity of online brain cancer education materials in the United States.Neuro-oncology practice · 2025Article
- Assessing the Functional Accessibility, Actionability, and Quality of Patient Education Materials from Canadian Cancer Agencies.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2023Article
- Quality and readability of online patient information on treatment for erectile dysfunction.BJUI compass · 2021Article
- Evaluating the readability, understandability, and quality of online materials about chest pain in children.European journal of pediatrics · 2020Article
- [Assessing the quality of digital health services: How can informed decisions be promoted?]Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz · 2020Review
- Health and well-being literacy initiatives focusing on immigrant communities: an environmental scan protocol to identify "what works and what does not".Systematic reviews · 2020Article
- Radiotherapy for prostate cancer: DISCERN quality assessment of patient-oriented websites in 2018.BMC urology · 2019Article
- Knowledge and Education as Barriers and Facilitators to Nicotine Replacement Therapy Use for Smoking Cessation in Pregnancy: A Qualitative Study with Health Care Professionals.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
- Developing and Evaluating Parents' Satisfaction with a Website to Manage Pediatric Asthma.Perspectives in health information managemen · 2019Article
- Promise of Mobile Health Technology to Reduce Disparities in Patients With Cancer and Survivors.JCO clinical cancer informatics · 2018Review
- HNMDA: heterogeneous network-based miRNA-disease association prediction.Molecular genetics and genomics : MGG · 2018Article
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Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Internet is one of the major sources for health information for patients and their families, particularly when patients face serious life-threatening conditions such as kidney cancer in adults. In this study, we evaluate the content and quality of health information on adult kidney cancer using several validated instruments. We accessed the three most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), using two terms: "kidney cancer" and "renal cell carcinoma," and reviewed the top 30 hits. After exclusion of duplicated websites, websites targeting health care professionals, and unrelated websites, 35 websites were included. Content was assessed using a 22-item checklist adapted from the American Cancer Society. We assessed website quality using the DISCERN questionnaire, HONcode and JAMA benchmark criteria, readability using three readability scores, and ALEXA for global traffic ranking systems. The average website had 16 of 22 content items while 6 websites fulfilled all 22 items. Among all websites, the average DISCERN quality score was 42 out of 80, 15 (42.8 %) of websites had HONcode certification, and only 3 (8.5 %) fulfilled all JAMA benchmark criteria. The average website readability was at the ninth grade reading level. The content and quality of health-related information on the Internet for adult kidney cancer are variable in comprehensiveness and quality. Many websites are difficult to read without a high school education. A standardized approach to presenting cancer information on the Internet for patients and families may be warranted.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.