ArticleJournal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine2018
Accuracy and Reliability of Internet Resources Providing Information on Obstructive Sleep Apnea.
Article in Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Appraisal of Readability in Patient-Facing Resources for the Inspire Hypoglossal Nerve Implant.Laryngoscope investigative otolaryngology · 2026Article
- The use and subjective experience of sleep apps and their relationship with personality characteristics among young adults.Frontiers in sleep · 2025Article
- Search engines and short video apps as sources of information on acute pancreatitis in China: quality assessment and content assessment.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Online Patient Education in Obstructive Sleep Apnea: ChatGPT versus Google Search.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Obstructive Sleep Apnoea in Children with Down Syndrome: A Multidisciplinary Approach.Journal of personalized medicine · 2022Article
- Quality of Online Information on Multiple Myeloma Available for Laypersons.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2022Article
- Article
- Use of online resources by undergraduate medical students at College of Medicine, Majmaah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.PloS one · 2021Article
- Web-based health Information Seeking and eHealth Literacy among College students. A Self-report study.Investigacion y educacion en enfermeria · 2020Article
- The Internet: Sleep On It.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2018Article
- Article
- Characterization and reliability of internet resources on pulmonary rehabilitation for individuals with chronic lung disease.Chronic respiratory diseaseArticle
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
STUDY
objectivesTo evaluate the readability, content, and quality of internet information about obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
methodsThree major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) were used to retrieve the first 200 hits for the term "sleep apnea." The website contents were assessed using established guidelines, while the website quality was evaluated using the validated DISCERN instrument and
resultsIn total, 243 websites met the inclusion criteria for this study. The websites were divided into five categories: scientific resource, foundation, news/ media report, commercial website, and personal commentary. The mean Flesch-Kincaid grade level, which indicated the readability of the websites, was 7.5. The quality of most websites was poor, with news/media reports and commercial websites exhibiting poorer quality than the others. The Health On the Net (HON) code, which certifies the reliability and credibility of online content regarding human health, was applied only to 14.3% websites; the reliability of all these websites was poor. The content score for the diagnosis and management of OSA was lower for news/media reports and commercial websites than for scientific resources. News/media reports exhibited the worst content scores.
conclusionsOur findings suggest that most online health resources regarding OSA are not reliable and are inaccurate. Health care providers should be aware of the high variability in online information concerning OSA. COMMENTARY: A commentary on this article appears in this issue on page 1643.
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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.