1. Reporting on post-menopausal hormone therapy: An analysis of gynaecologists' Web pages
- Author
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Bernhilde Deitermann, Petra Kolip, and Jens Bucksch
- Subjects
Informed choice ,medicine.medical_specialty ,medicine.medical_treatment ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Alternative medicine ,Information Storage and Retrieval ,menopause ,Health Informatics ,Post menopausal ,surgical departments ,quality of content ,World Wide Web ,world-wide-web ,Health Information Management ,replacement therapy ,Germany ,Web page ,Humans ,Medicine ,gynaecologists ,Quality (business) ,basic criteria ,breast-cancer ,General Nursing ,Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic ,health initiative memory ,media_common ,evaluation ,business.industry ,Estrogen Replacement Therapy ,medical information ,estrogen plus progestin ,patient information ,hormone replacement therapy ,Gynecology ,Transgender hormone therapy ,Family medicine ,randomized controlled-trial ,Female ,The Internet ,internet ,Hormone therapy ,business - Abstract
Background: The present study was designed to analyse Web pages of German gynaecologists with regard to postmenopausal hormone therapy ( HT). There is a growing body of evidence, that the overall health risks of HT exceed the benefits. Making one's own informed choice has become a central concern for menopausal women. The Internet is an important source of health information, but the quality is often dubious. The study focused on the analysis of basic criteria such as last modi. cation date and quality of the HT information content. The results of the Women's Health Initiative Study (WHI) were used as a benchmark. Methods: We searched for relevant Web pages by entering a combination of key words (9 x 13 = 117) into the search engine www.google.de. Each Web page was analysed using a standardized questionnaire. The basic criteria and the quality of content on each Web page were separately categorized by two evaluators. Disagreements were resolved by discussion. Main Findings: Of the 97 websites identified, basic criteria were not met by the majority. For example, the modi. cation date was displayed by only 23 (23.7%) Web pages. The quality of content of most Web pages regarding HT was inaccurate and incomplete. Whilst only nine (9.3%) took up a balanced position, 66 (68%) recommended HT without any restrictions. In 22 cases the recommendation was indistinct and none of the sites refused HT. With regard to basic criteria, there was no difference between HT-recommending Web pages and sites with balanced position. Conclusion: Evidence-based information resulting from the WHI trial was insufficiently represented on gynaecologists' Web pages. Because of the growing number of consumers looking online for health information, the danger of obtaining harmful information has to be minimized. Web pages of gynaecologists do not appear to be recommendable for women because they do not provide recent evidence-based findings about HT.
- Published
- 2004
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