Abstract
Introduction: The use of health information is expanding; however, individuals need a certain level of ability to interpret and deal with online health information from the Internet. We assessed the readability of online Italian information regarding renal disease.
Methods: We selected academic, commercial, and non-profit reality websites giving information about renal disease, by “nefrologia” (nephrology) and “dialisi” (dialysis) as search words on the Bing search engine. The readability was evaluated using Visual SEO Studio calculating the Flesch-Vacca score (1972 formula), the Flesch-Vacca score (1986 formula), and the Gulpease score.
Results: The websites were classified in commercial websites (n=11), scientific societies and institutional websites (n=4), health care professional websites (n=3), information websites (n=3) and patients’ association websites (n=5). The median value of the Vacca 72 score was 33, the Vacca 86 score was 54, and the Gulpease score 74, with a wide variability. The highest readability scores were detected by calculating the Gulpease index in healthcare professionals’ and patients’ association websites. On the contrary, the lowest scores were computed using the Vacca 72 index in information and healthcare professional websites. We detected a correlation between the three scores, especially between the two Vacca ones. The three scores evaluated demonstrated an essential overlap in the five groups of websites.
Conclusion: Evaluation of the readability of content on renal disease on websites written in Italian gives extensive results and does not appear to consider health literacy. Intervention aimed at simplifying the language of a website dealing with renal disease is desirable.