ArticleJournal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education2026
Patient Educational Materials for Pheochromocytoma Exceed Recommended Readability Level: An Analysis Across Three Independent Reading Instruments.
Article in Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education, 2026. 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
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Patient education is a critical component of effective medical care; > 50% of patients seek medical information from online sources. The recommended reading level is sixth grade. This study examines reading level of current online educational resources for patients with pheochromocytoma. A review of 50 online patient educational materials related to pheochromocytomas was performed. Using three validated instruments: Flesch Reading Ease (FRE), Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), and Gunning Fog Index (GFI) scores, the reading grade level was calculated, and Spearman correlations were performed to evaluate associations between the reading instruments. Thirty-two online patient educational materials were included. The majority of the materials were from academic and research institutions (47%), followed by general information and overviews (19%), government health resources (9%), cancer-specific organizations (9%), support and advocacy groups (9%), and children's health (6%). There were no patient materials that were written at the appropriate grade level. Materials were above a twelfth-grade reading level in 61% of sources (FRE = 78.2%, SMOG = 40.6%, GFI = 59.4%). There were strong, positive correlations between the three reading instruments utilized in the analysis. Readable educational materials facilitate effective healthcare literacy and empower patients to participate in health care decisions, which is especially important given the complex diagnostic and therapeutic considerations for pheochromocytomas. This study is the first to assess readability of online educational resources for patients with pheochromocytoma and reveals a significant gap in the availability of materials that meet the recommended grade level. Developing online education materials that meet the recommended reading grade level is essential to inform patient education and shared decision-making.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.