Original ArticleAn Evaluation of Information Available on the Internet Regarding Minimally Invasive Hip Arthroplasty
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
We used the search term Minimally invasive hip replacement in 3 search engines (Google, MSN, and Yahoo!). Beginning with Yahoo!, followed by Google and, finally, MSN, we identified the total number of Web sites using these search terms. The top 50 matches from each site, excluding any identical Web sites within and between search engines, were evaluated for authorship and content.
Results
As of November 3, 2004, the total number of Web sites per search engine regarding minimally invasive hip arthroplasty was 24 300, 36 600, and 7224 for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, respectively. The results of the detailed evaluation of the top 50 Web sites per search engine (excluding duplicates) are described in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4. Forty-five percent (67/150) were sponsored by a hospital or university, 26% (38/150) were associated with a private medical group, 24% (36/150) were news
Discussion
The results of this study indicate that the information available on the Internet regarding minimally invasive THA is inaccurate and misleading. The existing peer-reviewed literature related to minimally invasive THA is inconclusive regarding the benefits of these techniques over traditional techniques 1, 5, 6, 15, 16, with no level 1 evidence currently available. Most claims made on the Web sites we reviewed have not been substantiated by the existing peer-reviewed literature. Although most
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