Abdominal imaging info not readily readable by many Americans

Consumers who search the Internet for information on abdominal imaging are likely to encounter much material that’s intended to be reader-friendly yet lies beyond their grasp, according to a study published online Nov. 12 in Abdominal Radiology.

David Hansberry, MD, PhD, of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and colleagues concluded so after using Google in October 2015 to search 10 terms common to the subspecialty.

The team collected the top 10 consumer-targeted pages returned for each term, then applied 10 validated quantitative-readability scales to measure the content for accessibility.

The search terms were CT abdomen, MRI abdomen, MRI enterography, ultrasound abdomen, x-ray abdomen, cholecystitis, diverticulitis, hepatitis, inflammatory bowel disease and pancreatitis.

As a whole, the 100 articles had a grade level of 11.7, very nearly requiring completion of high school to comprehend.

Nearly half (49 percent) came in at 12th grade or higher—and only two percent were written to meet the functional eighth-grade level recommended by the National Institutes of Health and the American Medical Association.

“With websites like radiologyinfo.org generating over a million visitors a month, it is that clear there is a public interest in learning about radiology,” the authors write. “However, given the discordance between the level of readability of the majority of the Internet articles and the NIH and AMA guidelines noted in this study on abdominal imaging readability, it is likely that many readers do not fully benefit from these resources on abdominal imaging.”

Earlier this fall a study found a similar readability gap in mammography info online.