Quality and Accessibility of Obstetric Anal Sphincter Injury Online Patient Resources

Importance No study has evaluated the health information available on the internet regarding obstetric anal sphincter injury. Objectives The aim of this study was to assess the quality and accessibility of information on the internet for patients regarding obstetric anal sphincter injury. Study Design This cross-sectional study analyzed online obstetric anal sphincter injury health information through a Google search, collecting the top 20 websites for 9 medical and lay terms. Quality was evaluated using the DISCERN score and the Journal of the American Medical Association benchmark criteria. Reading level was determined using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. Mean DISCERN scores were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis test. Results One hundred eleven unique websites were identified; 46.8% (n = 52) were directed toward medical professionals, and 9% (n = 10) were for law firms or e-commerce sites. Of the patient-facing websites, 24.3% (n = 27) were from health organizations outside of the United States. The DISCERN scores ranged from 16 to 77. Only 18% of websites met all 4 benchmark criteria; 10.8% (n = 12) of websites were inaccessible without subscriptions to journals or databases. Conclusions Obstetric anal sphincter injury health information online is of generally high quality, but primarily for medical professionals. Terms like “anal sphincter injury” required a 15th-grade reading level. While some terms yielded more patient-facing information, their reading levels remained above recommended levels for patients. This study highlights the paucity of broadly-accessible patient-facing obstetric anal sphincter injury resources on the internet because of variable quality, inability to perform credibility assessment, and physical and readability accessibility barriers.