bims-librar 2021-03-14 papers

bims-librar

Biomed News

on Biomedical librarianship

Issue of 2021–03–14
23 papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society

Outreach marketing may be a successful strategy for NHS libraries.
'Evidence' within local authority decision making.
Anne O'Tate: Value-added PubMed search engine for analysis and text mining.
Mental health clinicians views of summary and systematic review utility in evidence-based practice.
Who is blocking access to PubMed? Educational 'Escape Room' for medical residents.
Empowering large chemical knowledge bases for exposomics: PubChemLite meets MetFrag.
Comparative study using inverse ontology cogency and alternatives for concept recognition in the annotated National Library of Medicine database.
Classification of covid related articles using machine learning.
DECIMER-Segmentation: Automated extraction of chemical structure depictions from scientific literature.
A Review of Microsoft Academic Services for Science of Science Studies.
Classification of the Use of Online Health Information Channels and Variation in Motivations for Channel Selection: Cross-sectional Survey.
Neural circuitry of information seeking.
The quality of Internet information relating to 2019-nCov transmission control in dental practice.
YouTube - An unreliable source of information for Total hip replacement.
YouTube as a resource for surgical education with a focus on plastic surgery - a systematic review.
Online educational materials for appendectomy patients have good quality but poor readability.
YouTube Videos on Parkinson's Disease are a Relevant Source of Patient Information.
Tennis elbow: what is the score on Internet-based information?
Content analysis of promotional material for asthma-related products and therapies on Instagram.
YouTube as an information source for instrument separation in root canal treatment.
An evaluation of the quality of online information on emergency contraception.
Evaluation of YouTube videos as a patient education source for novel surgical techniques in thyroid surgery.
Parental Cancer-related Information Seeking, Health Communication and Satisfaction with Medical Providers of Childhood Cancer Survivors: Differences by Race/Ethnicity and Language Preference.

Health Info Libr J. 2021 Mar;38(1): 61-65

Outreach marketing may be a successful strategy for NHS libraries.

Hayley Clark.

  This dissertation study investigates the ways that NHS libraries are currently marketing their services within their organisation and was submitted as part of the MA Library and Information Management at the University of Sheffield in 2019. This paper presents the findings from twelve semi-structured interviews carried out with NHS library managers in the East of England to identify the most and least successful methods, and in comparison with that which is currently in the general marketing literature. The study found that outreach marketing was the most effective and that librarians are currently conducting marketing to the best of their ability, but they lack time and funding to be able to make the most of their promotional campaigns. F.J.

Keywords:  libraries, hospital; libraries, medical; marketing; research, qualitative

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12357
Health Info Libr J. 2021 Mar;38(1): 1-4

'Evidence' within local authority decision making.

Michael Cook.

Michael Cook looks at the role of an embedded Public Health Information Specialist highlighting the ways the core evidence, information and knowledge skills are used to progress Public Health activity in local government settings. Acknowledging the current pandemic, he explores how COVID-19 has dominated all aspects of health and social care, and outlines how evidence services have work within these complex Public Health systems to lead the local response and recovery efforts.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12363
PLoS One. 2021 ;16(3): e0248335

Anne O'Tate: Value-added PubMed search engine for analysis and text mining.

Neil R Smalheiser, Dean P Fragnito, Eric E Tirk.

Over a decade ago, we introduced Anne O'Tate, a free, public web-based tool http://arrowsmith.psych.uic.edu/cgi-bin/arrowsmith_uic/AnneOTate.cgi to support user-driven summarization, drill-down and mining of search results from PubMed, the leading search engine for biomedical literature. A set of hotlinked buttons allows the user to sort and rank retrieved articles according to important words in titles and abstracts; topics; author names; affiliations; journal names; publication year; and clustered by topic. Any result can be further mined by choosing any other button, and small search results can be expanded to include related articles. It has been deployed continuously, serving a wide range of biomedical users and needs, and over time has also served as a platform to support the creation of new tools that address additional needs. Here we describe the current, greatly expanded implementation of Anne O'Tate, which has added additional buttons to provide new functionalities: We now allow users to sort and rank search results by important phrases contained in titles and abstracts; the number of authors listed on the article; and pairs of topics that co-occur significantly more than chance. We also display articles according to NLM-indexed publication types, as well as according to 50 different publication types and study designs as predicted by a novel machine learning-based model. Furthermore, users can import search results into two new tools: e) Mine the Gap!, which identifies pairs of topics that are under-represented within set of the search results, and f) Citation Cloud, which for any given article, allows users to visualize the set of articles that cite it; that are cited by it; that are co-cited with it; and that are bibliographically coupled to it. We invite the scientific community to explore how Anne O'Tate can assist in analyzing biomedical literature, in a variety of use cases.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248335
Health Info Libr J. 2021 Mar 10.

Mental health clinicians views of summary and systematic review utility in evidence-based practice.

Rachel Steele.

   BACKGROUND: Evidence-based practice (EBP) requires integration of research evidence with clinical expertise and patient preferences. It is endorsed by many regulatory bodies, using the approach is challenging for many busy clinicians.
OBJECTIVES: To explore mental health practitioners' perceptions of the factors which help, and which hinder, EBP and their views of two formats for presenting research findings - a systematic review and a one-page summary of that review. (written by a clinical librarian) METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews with a multi-professional sample of mental health clinicians. (n=7) RESULTS: Participants worked under varying time constraints, with some participants perceiving a conflict between research activities such as reading the evidence and their clinical duties one-page research summary would help some participienrs to identify potentially valuable evidence quickly. However, participants agreed that they would need to read full systematic review to assess whether and how their practice could or should change.
DISCUSSION: A one-page research summary can perform useful functions for clinicians; however, they require more detailed research reports such as systematic reviews to judge research's external validity.
CONCLUSION: This exploratory study indicates that writing evidence summaries is a useful role for clinical librarians, as part of training and support for EBP.

Keywords:  critical appraisal; education and training; evidence summaries; evidence-based medicine (EBM); evidence-based practice (EBP); health information needs; information skills; knowledge translation; librarians, clinical; mental health services; research, qualitative; research skills

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12359
Health Info Libr J. 2021 Mar;38(1): 72-76

Who is blocking access to PubMed? Educational 'Escape Room' for medical residents.

Noelia Álvarez-Díaz, Eulàlia Grifol-Clar.

  Teaching students how to conduct bibliographic searches in health sciences' databases is essential training. One of the challenges librarians face is how to motivate students during classroom learning. In this article, two hospital libraries, in Spain, used Escape rooms as a method of bringing creativity, teamwork, communication and critical thinking into bibliographic search instruction. Escape rooms are a series of puzzles that must be solved to exit the game. This article explores the methods used for integrating escape rooms into training programmes and evaluates the results. Escape Rooms are a useful tool that can be integrated into residents' training to support their instruction on bibliographic searches. This kind of learning stablishes competences like logical thinking and deductive approaching. These aspects aid participants to make their own decision and to develop social and intellectual skills.

Keywords:  PubMed; bibliographic databases; education; libraries, hospital; literature searching; students, medical; teaching

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12360
J Cheminform. 2021 Mar 08. 13(1): 19

Empowering large chemical knowledge bases for exposomics: PubChemLite meets MetFrag.

Emma L Schymanski, Todor Kondić, Steffen Neumann, Paul A Thiessen, Jian Zhang, Evan E Bolton.

  Compound (or chemical) databases are an invaluable resource for many scientific disciplines. Exposomics researchers need to find and identify relevant chemicals that cover the entirety of potential (chemical and other) exposures over entire lifetimes. This daunting task, with over 100 million chemicals in the largest chemical databases, coupled with broadly acknowledged knowledge gaps in these resources, leaves researchers faced with too much-yet not enough-information at the same time to perform comprehensive exposomics research. Furthermore, the improvements in analytical technologies and computational mass spectrometry workflows coupled with the rapid growth in databases and increasing demand for high throughput "big data" services from the research community present significant challenges for both data hosts and workflow developers. This article explores how to reduce candidate search spaces in non-target small molecule identification workflows, while increasing content usability in the context of environmental and exposomics analyses, so as to profit from the increasing size and information content of large compound databases, while increasing efficiency at the same time. In this article, these methods are explored using PubChem, the NORMAN Network Suspect List Exchange and the in silico fragmentation approach MetFrag. A subset of the PubChem database relevant for exposomics, PubChemLite, is presented as a database resource that can be (and has been) integrated into current workflows for high resolution mass spectrometry. Benchmarking datasets from earlier publications are used to show how experimental knowledge and existing datasets can be used to detect and fill gaps in compound databases to progressively improve large resources such as PubChem, and topic-specific subsets such as PubChemLite. PubChemLite is a living collection, updating as annotation content in PubChem is updated, and exported to allow direct integration into existing workflows such as MetFrag. The source code and files necessary to recreate or adjust this are jointly hosted between the research parties (see data availability statement). This effort shows that enhancing the FAIRness (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) of open resources can mutually enhance several resources for whole community benefit. The authors explicitly welcome additional community input on ideas for future developments.

Keywords:  Chemical database; Cheminformatics; Compound database; Compound knowledge base; Environmental science; Exposomics; FAIR; High resolution mass spectrometry; Identification; Open science

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-021-00489-0
Neural Netw. 2021 Feb 11. pii: S0893-6080(21)00026-5. [Epub ahead of print]139 86-104

Comparative study using inverse ontology cogency and alternatives for concept recognition in the annotated National Library of Medicine database.

George J Shannon, Naga Rayapati, Steven M Corns, Donald C Wunsch.

  This paper introduces inverse ontology cogency, a concept recognition process and distance function that is biologically-inspired and competitive with alternative methods. The paper introduces inverse ontology cogency as a new alternative method. It is a novel distance measure used in selecting the optimum mapping between ontology-specified concepts and phrases in free-form text. We also apply a multi-layer perceptron and text processing method for named entity recognition as an alternative to recurrent neural network methods. Automated named entity recognition, or concept recognition, is a common task in natural language processing. Similarities between confabulation theory and existing language models are discussed. This paper provides comparisons to MetaMap from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a popular tool used in medicine to map free-form text to concepts in a medical ontology. The NLM provides a manually annotated database from the medical literature with concepts labeled, a unique, valuable source of ground truth, permitting comparison with MetaMap performance. Comparisons for different feature set combinations are made to demonstrate the effectiveness of inverse ontology cogency for entity recognition. Results indicate that using both inverse ontology cogency and corpora cogency improved concept recognition precision 20% over the best published MetaMap results. This demonstrates a new, effective approach for identifying medical concepts in text. This is the first time cogency has been explicitly invoked for reasoning with ontologies, and the first time it has been used on medical literature where high-quality ground truth is available for quality assessment.

Keywords:  Cogent confabulation; Concept recognition; Language model; Natural language processing

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2021.01.018
Mater Today Proc. 2021 Feb 28.

Classification of covid related articles using machine learning.

Deepthi Godavarthi, Mary Sowjanya A.

  Covid 19 pandemic has placed the entire world in a precarious condition. Earlier it was a serious issue in china whereas now it is being witnessed by citizens all over the world. Scientists are working hard to find treatment and vaccines for the coronavirus, also termed as covid. With the growing literature, it has become a major challenge for the medical community to find answers to questions related to covid-19. We have proposed a machine learning-based system that uses text classification applications of NLP to extract information from the scientific literature. Classification of large textual data makes the searching process easier thus useful for scientists. The main aim of our system is to classify the abstracts related to covid with their respective journals so that a researcher can refer to articles of his interest from the required journals instead of searching all the articles. In this paper, we describe our methodology needed to build such a system. Our system experiments on the COVID-19 open research dataset and the performance is evaluated using classifiers like KNN, MLP, etc. An explainer was also built using XGBoost to show the model predictions.

Keywords:  COVID-19; Explainability; KNN; MLP; Text classification; XGBoost

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.01.480
J Cheminform. 2021 Mar 08. 13(1): 20

DECIMER-Segmentation: Automated extraction of chemical structure depictions from scientific literature.

Kohulan Rajan, Henning Otto Brinkhaus, Maria Sorokina, Achim Zielesny, Christoph Steinbeck.

  Chemistry looks back at many decades of publications on chemical compounds, their structures and properties, in scientific articles. Liberating this knowledge (semi-)automatically and making it available to the world in open-access databases is a current challenge. Apart from mining textual information, Optical Chemical Structure Recognition (OCSR), the translation of an image of a chemical structure into a machine-readable representation, is part of this workflow. As the OCSR process requires an image containing a chemical structure, there is a need for a publicly available tool that automatically recognizes and segments chemical structure depictions from scientific publications. This is especially important for older documents which are only available as scanned pages. Here, we present DECIMER (Deep lEarning for Chemical IMagE Recognition) Segmentation, the first open-source, deep learning-based tool for automated recognition and segmentation of chemical structures from the scientific literature. The workflow is divided into two main stages. During the detection step, a deep learning model recognizes chemical structure depictions and creates masks which define their positions on the input page. Subsequently, potentially incomplete masks are expanded in a post-processing workflow. The performance of DECIMER Segmentation has been manually evaluated on three sets of publications from different publishers. The approach operates on bitmap images of journal pages to be applicable also to older articles before the introduction of vector images in PDFs. By making the source code and the trained model publicly available, we hope to contribute to the development of comprehensive chemical data extraction workflows. In order to facilitate access to DECIMER Segmentation, we also developed a web application. The web application, available at https://decimer.ai , lets the user upload a pdf file and retrieve the segmented structure depictions.

Keywords:  Chemical data extraction; Deep learning; Image Segmentation; Neural Networks; Optical Chemical Structure Recognition

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-021-00496-1
Front Big Data. 2019 ;2 45

A Review of Microsoft Academic Services for Science of Science Studies.

Kuansan Wang, Zhihong Shen, Chiyuan Huang, Chieh-Han Wu, Darrin Eide, Yuxiao Dong, Junjie Qian, Anshul Kanakia, Alvin Chen, Richard Rogahn.

  Since the relaunch of Microsoft Academic Services (MAS) 4 years ago, scholarly communications have undergone dramatic changes: more ideas are being exchanged online, more authors are sharing their data, and more software tools used to make discoveries and reproduce the results are being distributed openly. The sheer amount of information available is overwhelming for individual humans to keep up and digest. In the meantime, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have made great strides and the cost of computing has plummeted to the extent that it has become practical to employ intelligent agents to comprehensively collect and analyze scholarly communications. MAS is one such effort and this paper describes its recent progresses since the last disclosure. As there are plenty of independent studies affirming the effectiveness of MAS, this paper focuses on the use of three key AI technologies that underlies its prowess in capturing scholarly communications with adequate quality and broad coverage: (1) natural language understanding in extracting factoids from individual articles at the web scale, (2) knowledge assisted inference and reasoning in assembling the factoids into a knowledge graph, and (3) a reinforcement learning approach to assessing scholarly importance for entities participating in scholarly communications, called the saliency, that serves both as an analytic and a predictive metric in MAS. These elements enhance the capabilities of MAS in supporting the studies of science of science based on the GOTO principle, i.e., good and open data with transparent and objective methodologies. The current direction of development and how to access the regularly updated data and tools from MAS, including the knowledge graph, a REST API and a website, are also described.

Keywords:  academic search; artificail intelligence (AI); knowledge graph (KG); machine cognition; microsoft academic graph; microsoft academic services

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2019.00045
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Mar 09. 23(3): e24945

Classification of the Use of Online Health Information Channels and Variation in Motivations for Channel Selection: Cross-sectional Survey.

Di Zhang, Zhen Shi, Hongchao Hu, Gang Kevin Han.

   BACKGROUND: Existing health education and communication research routinely measures online channel use as a whole by, for example, evaluating how frequently people use the internet to search for health information. This approach fails to capture the complexity and diversity of online channel use in health information seeking. The measurement of generic online channel use may cause too much error, and it lends no support to media planning in public health promotion campaigns or scholarly research involving online channel use.
OBJECTIVE: This study intends to present a thorough picture of patterns of online health information channel use and classify the use of various types of online health information channels, including WeChat, microblogs, web portals, search engines, mobile apps, and online forums. Under the framework of the risk information seeking and processing model, this study also analyzes the differences in individuals' motivations for channel selection to offer further evidence to validate the classification scheme.
METHODS: This study sampled 542 Chinese internet users in Beijing. The average age of the respondents was 33 years, female respondents accounted for 52.0% (282/542) of the sample, and the average monthly income ranged from US $900 to $1200. The study surveyed the use of 13 commonly used online health information channels and various sociopsychological factors associated with online health information seeking.
RESULTS: This study derived 3 categories of online health information channels: searching, browsing, and scanning channels. It was found that the use of online searching channels was affect driven (B=0.11; β=0.10; P=.02) and characterized by a stronger need for health knowledge (B=0.09; β=0.01; P<.001). The use of browsing channels was directly influenced by informational subjective norms (B=0.33; β=0.15; P=.004) and perceived current knowledge (B=0.007; β=0.09; P=.003). The use of scanning channels was mainly influenced by informational subjective norms (B=0.29; β=0.15; P=.007).
CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that health communication practitioners and scholars may consider measuring the use of internet, new media, or online media more precisely instead of simply asking the public about the frequency of online channel use or internet use in the acquisition of health information. Scholars and practitioners may consider measuring the use of online health information channels by using the 3-category scheme described in this study. Future research is encouraged to further explore how people process health information when using different online channels.

Keywords:  browse; channel selection; health communication; health education; health information; health information seeking; online media; scan; search

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/24945
Curr Opin Behav Sci. 2020 Oct;35 62-70

Neural circuitry of information seeking.

Ethan S Bromberg-Martin, Ilya E Monosov.

  Humans and animals navigate uncertain environments by seeking information about the future. Remarkably, we often seek information even when it has no instrumental value for aiding our decisions - as if the information is a source of value in its own right. In recent years, there has been a flourishing of research into these non-instrumental information preferences and their implementation in the brain. Individuals value information about uncertain future rewards, and do so for multiple reasons, including valuing resolution of uncertainty and overweighting desirable information. The brain motivates this information seeking by tapping into some of the same circuitry as primary rewards like food and water. However, it also employs cortex and basal ganglia circuitry that predicts and values information as distinct from primary reward. Uncovering how these circuits cooperate will be fundamental to understanding information seeking and motivated behavior as a whole, in our increasingly complex and information-rich world.

Keywords:  Dopamine; cingulate; habenula; information; information seeking; observing response; orbitofrontal; pallidum; striatum; temporal resolution of uncertainty; uncertainty

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.07.006
J Clin Exp Dent. 2021 Mar;13(3): e250-e258

The quality of Internet information relating to 2019-nCov transmission control in dental practice.

Fabio Camacho-Alonso, José Lacal-Luján.

Background: To date, the quality of the Internet information regarding the control and management of 2019-nCov virus transmission in dental clinics has not been evaluated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of Internet information about the control of 2019-nCov transmission in dental practice.
Material and Methods: Internet websites were identified daily using two search engines: Google and Yahoo! during the week from 20-06-2020 to 26-06-2020, applying the search term "2019-nCov transmission control in dental practice." The first 100 consecutive sites identified in each search were visited and classified. The quality of information contained in each website was analyzed using the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmarks, whether the website had been granted the Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode), and a new tool for evaluating the quality of Internet websites providing information relating to 2019-nCov transmission control in dental practice, which awards a score of 0-40 points (8-13: poor; 14-26: medium; and 27-40 high).
Results: After the exclusion of duplicates, non-functioning websites, books/journals, irrelevant websites, or websites not in English, a total of 30 websites were evaluated. Only 6.66% fulfilled all four JAMA benchmarks, none had been granted the HONcode, and only 10% presented high quality information.
Conclusions: The quality of Internet information about 2019-nCov transmission control in dental practice is poor. This study points to the need to improve the quality of information available on the Internet relating to 2019-nCov transmission control in dental practice. Key words:2019-nCov, COVID-19, transmission control in dental practice, Internet, quality of information.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4317/jced.57573
J Clin Orthop Trauma. 2021 Feb;13 82-84

YouTube - An unreliable source of information for Total hip replacement.

Amit Kumar Yadav, G S Prasanna Kumar, Vikram Khanna.

   Background: YouTube is now becoming important for people as a source of health related information. The aim of the present study was to assess the educational quality of YouTube videos related to Total hip replacement.
Methods: A search on YouTube for the term "Total hip replacement" was performed. Data from 47 most relevant videos were collected. Quality assessment checklists with a scale of 0-10 points were developed to evaluate the video content. Videos were grouped into poor quality (grade 0-3), acceptable quality (grade 4-7), and excellent quality (grade 8-10).
Results: 91% of videos were of poor educational quality (43/47), 9% were of acceptable quality (4/47) and none of the videos were of excellent quality. Common missing information was regarding non-operative treatment options and types of bearing surfaces.
Conclusions: Videos regarding total hip replacement are frequently viewed on YouTube which is an unreliable educational source for patients, so it is important that surgeons should have knowledge about the available content so as to direct our patients to a suitable source. Also, surgeons should upload more informative videos that can be understood by patients which will be beneficial in providing information and education regarding Total Hip Replacement.

Keywords:  Total hip replacement; Video; YouTube

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcot.2020.08.010
J Plast Surg Hand Surg. 2021 Mar 10. 1-7

YouTube as a resource for surgical education with a focus on plastic surgery - a systematic review.

Inga S Besmens, Semra Uyulmaz, Pietro Giovanoli, Nicole Lindenblatt.

  Surgery trainees use videos as a means to learn about surgical procedures. YouTube is the biggest online video platform and used for educational content as well but the medical information provided does not undergo peer review or other forms of scientific screening and can thus be of poorer quality. We performed a systematic review that examined the quality of educational videos about surgery and plastic surgery in particular on YouTube. The focus was towards studies on the benefit of YouTube videos for surgical trainees. A literature review was performed to determine the educational quality of plastic surgery videos found on YouTube. Articles reviewing the educational quality of videos about surgical procedures, their accuracy, and their utility for surgical trainees were included. An additional review was performed evaluating the literature about the quality of educational plastic surgery videos. Eleven articles were selected reviewing the educational quality of videos about surgical procedures. Six studies were fully assessed and evaluated concerning the quality of educational plastic surgery videos. There currently seems to be a lack of comprehensive educational surgery and in particular plastic surgery-related information on YouTube. The popularity of YouTube among surgical trainees is high. The quality of available educational surgical video content varies widely. It is in the interest of plastic surgery teaching institutions to provide trainees with high-quality educational video material.

Keywords:  YouTube; education; hand; plastic surgery; social media; training

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/2000656X.2021.1884084
Am J Surg. 2021 Mar 03. pii: S0002-9610(21)00104-5. [Epub ahead of print]

Online educational materials for appendectomy patients have good quality but poor readability.

Roopal Rai, Adina Landsberg, Anne Nguyen, Sam M Wiseman.

   BACKGROUND: Guidelines recommend patient health-related information be written at or below the sixth-grade level. This study evaluates the readability level and quality of online appendectomy patient education materials.
METHODS: Webpages were evaluated using seven readability formulae: Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Coleman-Liau Index (CLI), Automated Readability Index (ARI), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), Flesch Reading Ease (FRE), and New Dale-Chall (NDC). Two evaluators assessed quality using the Brief DISCERN tool.
RESULTS: Thirty seven webpages were analyzed. The mean readability scores were: FKGL = 9.11, GFI = 11.82, CLI = 10.84, ARI = 7.99, SMOG = 11.88, FRE = 51.17, and NDC = 5.48. 6 of the 7 readability formulae indicate that the materials were written at too high a level. The average Brief DISCERN score was 17.81, indicating good quality.
CONCLUSIONS: Readability levels for online appendectomy patient education materials are higher than recommended but are of good quality. Authors of such materials should not only provide good quality information but also ensure readability.

Keywords:  Appendectomy; Appendicitis; Patient education materials; Quality; Readability

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjsurg.2021.02.022
J Parkinsons Dis. 2021 Feb 27.

YouTube Videos on Parkinson's Disease are a Relevant Source of Patient Information.

Anne K Braczynski, Bergita Ganse, Stephanie Ridwan, Christian Schlenstedt, Jörg B Schulz, Christoph Hoog Antink.

   BACKGROUND: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most frequent movement disorder. Patients access YouTube, one of the largest video databases in the World, to retrieve health-related information increasingly often.
OBJECTIVE: We aimed to identify high-quality publishers, so-called "channels" that can be recommended to patients. We hypothesized that the number of views and the number of uploaded videos were indicators for the quality of the information given by a video on PD.
METHODS: YouTube was searched for 8 combinations of search terms that included "Parkinson" in German. For each term, the first 100 search results were analyzed for source, date of upload, number of views, numbers of likes and dislikes, and comments. The view ratio (views / day) and the likes ratio (likes * 100 / [likes + dislikes]) were determined to calculate the video popularity index (VPI). The global quality score (GQS) and title - content consistency index (TCCI) were assessed in a subset of videos.
RESULTS: Of 800 search results, 251 videos met the inclusion criteria. The number of views or the publisher category were not indicative of higher quality video content. The number of videos uploaded by a channel was the best indicator for the quality of video content.
CONCLUSION: The quality of YouTube videos relevant for PD patients is increased in channels with a high number of videos on the topic. We identified three German channels that can be recommended to PD patients who prefer video over written content.

Keywords:  Chronic disease; health information; information retrieval; movement disorder; neurology; social media; video database

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3233/JPD-202513
Ir J Med Sci. 2021 Mar 12.

Tennis elbow: what is the score on Internet-based information?

Mohamed Elzaki, Martin Kelly, Cliodhna Ni Foghlú, Brian Lenehan, Dermot O'Farrell.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-021-02559-6
Allergy Asthma Clin Immunol. 2021 Mar 08. 17(1): 26

Content analysis of promotional material for asthma-related products and therapies on Instagram.

Brent Heineman, Marcella Jewell, Michael Moran, Kolbi Bradley, Kerry A Spitzer, Peter K Lindenauer.

   BACKGROUND: Increasingly, social media is a source for information about health and disease self-management. We conducted a content analysis of promotional asthma-related posts on Instagram to understand whether promoted products and services are consistent with the recommendations found in the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) 2019 guidelines.
METHODS: We collected every Instagram post incorporating a common, asthma-related hashtag between September 29, 2019 and October 5, 2019. Of these 2936 collected posts, we analyzed a random sample of 266, of which, 211 met our inclusion criteria. Using an inductive, qualitative approach, we categorized the promotional posts and compared each post's content with the recommendations contained in the 2019 GINA guidelines. Posts were categorized as "consistent with GINA" if the content was supported by the GINA guidelines. Posts that promoted content that was not recommended by or was unrelated to the guidelines were categorized as "not supported by GINA".
RESULTS: Of 211 posts, 89 (42.2%) were promotional in nature. Of these, a total of 29 (32.6%) were categorized as being consistent with GINA guidelines. The majority of posts were not supported by the guidelines. Forty-one (46.1%) posts promoted content that was not recommended by the current guidelines. Nineteen (21.3%) posts promoted content that was unrelated to the guidelines. The majority of unsupported content promoted non-pharmacological therapies (n = 39, 65%) to manage asthma, such as black seed oil, salt-room therapy, or cupping.
CONCLUSIONS: The majority of Instagram posts in our sample promoted products or services that were not supported by GINA guidelines. These findings suggest a need for providers to discuss online health information with patients and highlight an opportunity for providers and social media companies to promote evidence-based asthma treatments and self-management advice online.

Keywords:  Asthma; Clinical guidelines; Internet; Misinformation; Qualitative methods; Social media

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13223-021-00528-3
Restor Dent Endod. 2021 Feb;46(1): e8

YouTube as an information source for instrument separation in root canal treatment.

Yağız Özbay, Neslihan Yılmaz Çırakoğlu.

   Objectives: The reliability and educational quality of videos on YouTube for patients seeking information regarding instrument separation in root canal treatment were evaluated.
Materials and Methods: YouTube was searched for videos on instrument separation in root canal treatment. Video content was scored based on reliability in terms of 3 categories (etiology, procedure, and prognosis) and based on video flow, quality, and educational usefulness using the Global Quality Score (GQS). Descriptive statistics were obtained and the data were analyzed using analysis of variance and the Kruskal-Wallis test.
Results: The highest mean completeness scores were obtained for videos published by dentists or specialists (1.48 ± 1.06). There was no statistically significant difference among sources of upload in terms of content completeness. The highest mean GQS was found for videos published by dentists or specialists (1.82 ± 0.96), although there was no statistically significant correlation between GQS and the source of upload.
Conclusions: Videos on YouTube have incomplete and low-quality content for patients who are concerned about instrument separation during endodontic treatment, or who experience this complication during endodontic treatment.

Keywords:  Endodontics; Internet; Intraoperative Complications; Root Canal Preparation

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5395/rde.2021.46.e8
Eur J Contracept Reprod Health Care. 2021 Mar 10. 1-6

An evaluation of the quality of online information on emergency contraception.

Simrita Agrawal, Ciara Irwin, Rima K Dhillon-Smith.

   OBJECTIVES: The increasing availability of health information online combined with reduced access to health care providers due to the coronavirus pandemic means that more people are using the internet for health information. However, with no standardised regulation of the internet, the population is vulnerable to misinformation regarding important health information. This review aimed to evaluate the quality and readability of the online information available on emergency contraception (EC) options.
STUDY DESIGN: In this descriptive study, a Google search was performed using the term 'emergency contraception options' on 13 April 2020 yielding 232 results. Seventy-one results were excluded (34 inaccessible, 37 contained no medical information). The remaining 161 results were categorised by typology and assessed for credibility (JAMA criteria and HONcode), reliability (DISCERN tool) and readability (Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook).
RESULTS: Of all webpages evaluated, the most common typology was governmental. Credibility of web pages was poor (average JAMA score of 1.47 out of 4). Only 10.6% of webpages were HONcode certified. The most common DISCERN category was Fair (29.81%), closely followed by Poor (27.95%) reliability. On average, readability levels were above the recommended grade level for health information. The intrauterine device was discussed least frequently (86.96%) of all the EC options.
CONCLUSION: Online information was of low credibility, reliability and written above the recommended reading level. Clinicians should be aware of the poor quality of online information on EC options, and actively educate patients on what makes a source credible.

Keywords:  Online information; emergency contraception; health information quality; intrauterine device; levonorgestrel; ulipristal acetate; women’s health

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/13625187.2021.1887476
Gland Surg. 2021 Feb;10(2): 697-705

Evaluation of YouTube videos as a patient education source for novel surgical techniques in thyroid surgery.

Catherine Starks, Mounika Akkera, Mahmoud Shalaby, Ruhul Munshi, Eman Toraih, Grace S Lee, Emad Kandil, Mohamed Ahmed Shama.

   Background: Patients and physicians are increasingly utilizing online video sharing sites such as YouTube for obtaining and disseminating health-related information in multimedia format; however, due to its free, open-access platform, YouTube videos fall short in providing validated, up-to-date medical information, and may even convey unintended messages to patients who are seeking additional information on surgeries. We evaluated the relevance, reliability, and quality of YouTube videos on novel surgical techniques in thyroid surgery.
Methods: The top 50 indexed YouTube videos for the queries, "robotic thyroid surgery" and "transoral thyroid surgery", were assessed by two independent reviewers for video quality and reliability for patient understanding. Videos were scored using Global Quality Score (GQS), a scale for video quality, and DISCERN Scoring, a questionnaire for reliability and quality measures of information presented.
Results: The mean ± standard deviation (SD) duration of the videos (n=50) was 8.1±3.7 minutes. Total views were 261,440 and the mean ± SD time since upload was 3.6±2.6 years. The median and interquartile range of video power index (VPI) was 1.9 (0.5-3.7), GQS was 3.0 (2.0-4.0), and DISCERN score was 2.8 (2.3-3.2). Most videos were uploaded by physicians (75.8%) and the highest number of videos (63.6%) uploaded were from the United States (US). Videos with higher quality and reliability scores were uploaded by academic professionals, and included videos of physicians who described procedural information, perioperative instructions, and possible postoperative complications (P<0.05). Adequate medical information on the procedure and discussion of complications in YouTube videos were independent predictors of advanced educational quality and reliability.
Conclusions: Clinical information on new surgical techniques such as transoral and robotic thyroid surgeries in YouTube videos scored low on quality and reliability as a source of patient education. Physicians should provide supplemental educational material online and offline to aid patient understanding of novel procedures.

Keywords:  DISCERN; Global Quality Score (GQS); YouTube; robotic thyroid surgery; transoral thyroid surgery

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.21037/gs-20-734
J Health Commun. 2021 Mar 10. 1-9

Parental Cancer-related Information Seeking, Health Communication and Satisfaction with Medical Providers of Childhood Cancer Survivors: Differences by Race/Ethnicity and Language Preference.

Carol Y Ochoa, Kimberly A Miller, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, Rhona I Slaughter, Ann S Hamilton, Joel E Milam.

For childhood cancer survivors (CCS), parents play an important role in communicating with providers and conveying patient's needs. This exploratory study examined the prevalence of cancer-related information-seeking among parents of CCS and investigated the association between parents' race/ethnicity and language preference with health communication and satisfaction with child's medical providers. One hundred and sixty CCS and their parents from two hospitals in Los Angeles County were recruited from the SEER registry. Multivariable logistic regression analyses assessed associations between parents' race/ethnicity and language preference and their health communication with their child and with their child's medical care providers. Among the parents, 29% were Spanish-speaking Hispanics, 27% English-speaking Hispanics, and 43% English-speaking non-Hispanics. Regardless of language preference, Hispanic parents were more likely than non-Hispanic parents to receive health information about their CCS's cancer from hospital sources versus the internet. There was no difference by ethnicity/language in parent satisfaction with their CCS's medical provider. Spanish-speaking Hispanic parents were more likely to report talking to their CCS about the need for cancer-related follow-up care compared to non-Hispanic English-speaking parents. These findings point to the potential importance of parents' ethnicity and language for sources of health information and frequency of communication with their CCS about their cancer care.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2021.1895919