ArticleMedical acupuncture2024
Internet as a Source of Public Health Information on Acupuncture for Pain Relief: Credibility Assessment and Readability Analysis.
Article in Medical acupuncture, 2024. 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
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the number of patients seeking information from online health websites. As the information available on these websites can significantly impact the overall health of individuals in a society, it is vital for online health information to be presented in a manner that is readable and credible to the general public. To address this concern, the objective of the study was to examine and assess the credibility and readability of websites about acupuncture as a pain management approach. Methods: The research population was represented by websites containing information about pain management using acupuncture found through Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines and with the keywords acupuncture and pain. The websites were evaluated in terms of confirming HON and JAMA criteria. FRE, GFI, FKGL, CLI, SMOG, and ARI indexes were used to assess their readability, and Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare the data. Results: This study evaluated 52 websites that appeared on the first three pages of search engine results. Out of the 52 websites analyzed, 40 websites (76.9%) met the validity criteria set by JAMA, while only 21 websites (40.4%) were deemed valid based on the HONcode standards. According to the average readability index (12.38), the contents presented on the websites were at the Difficult to Read level. The mean readability scores of websites across various domains exhibit no statistically significant difference ( Conclusion: The majority of websites that provide acupuncture-related information do meet the verification set by HONcode. Additionally, the scientific and educational content on these websites tends to be more complex than what is recommended by the AMA and NIH. This is concerning given the increasing popularity of online content and the impact it has on public health. Providers of this information must prioritize making it readable to a wide audience.
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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.