ArticleAnnals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England2025
Assessing the readability and quality of online written information on epistaxis.
Article in Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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.
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Who cites it
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThe objective of this study was to assess the readability and quality of online written information on epistaxis.
methodsThe terms 'epistaxis' and 'nosebleed' were entered into Google. The first six webpages generated for each search term were screened. Readability was assessed using the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score (FRES), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) Index and Gunning Fog Index (GFOG). Quality was assessed using the DISCERN instrument. Spearman's correlation between quality and readability was calculated.
resultsA total of 37 websites met the inclusion criteria. The mean and 95% confidence intervals for FRES, FKGL, SMOG and GFOG were 58.9 (55.3-62.5), 9.65 (8.74-10.6), 9.18 (8.57-9.8) and 12.5 (11.5-13.5), respectively. The DISCERN score was 34.3 (32.0-36.5). Weak negative correlation was noted between DISCERN and FRES (
conclusionsOnline information on epistaxis is generally of poor quality and low readability.
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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.