To The Editor:
I read the paper "Evaluating the Source and Content
of Orthopaedic Information on the Internet. The Case of Carpal Tunnel
Syndrome" (82-A: 1540-1543, November 2000), by Beredjiklian
et al., with concern. The authors’ search for information about
carpal tunnel syndrome led them to conclude that "the information
about carpal tunnel syndrome on the Internet is of limited quality
and poor informational value."
This conclusion must be challenged for the following reasons:
(1) I and some of my colleagues have specialized in facilitating
use of the Internet by surgeons and patients. In 1998, we formed
ISOST, the Internet Society of Orthopaedic Surgery and Trauma (isost.org).
ISOST has conducted workshops at many national and international
orthopaedic meetings, and many of its members have worked tirelessly
to bring this technology to their colleagues. I would invite your
readers to attend one of these workshops or simply to visit the
ISOST web site to find out how to better use the Internet.
(2) The five search engines selected in this paper are known
to be of limited value for orthopaedic content.
Please try a specialized search engine (www.orthosearch.com; www.worldmedicus.com; or
www. orthoguide.com) or simply enter the term "carpal tunnel
syndrome" into the search engine Google, and your difficulties
will disappear.
P.K. Beredjiklian, D.J. Bozentka, D.R. Steinberg, and
J. Bernstein reply:
We thank Dr. Sherry for his interest in our study. While we appreciate
the efforts of Dr. Sherry and his colleagues in bringing orthopaedic
information to Internet users, the reality is that the handful of web
sites and search engines mentioned in his letter will undoubtedly
be drowned in the sea of millions of web sites which currently form
the World Wide Web. This is all the more likely if the user does
not search the Internet with specific knowledge of the web sites
mentioned in his letter.
As stated in our paper, we attempted to recreate the method that
we believe most people use to search for information on the Internet—entering
a phrase into a search engine. The search engines used in our study
were selected because of their popularity and frequency of use,
not because of the depth of orthopaedic information. Dr. Sherry
suggests that performing a search with a specialized search engine would
yield better results. While we agree with this assertion, we believe
that most individuals (patients) do not garner information from
the Internet in this way, but do so by using popular search engines.
Dr. Sherry states in his letter that the search engines used "are
known to be of limited value for orthopaedic content." We
welcome any references which support this statement. In fact, the
main purpose of this study was to assess this "limited
value" in a scientific way.