Copyright
©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Influence of education and residence on the parental search for pediatric surgical information on the internet
Maria Aggelidou, Savas P Deftereos, Dimitrios C Cassimos, Konstantinos Skarentzos, Panagoula Oikonomou, Artemis Angelidou, Christina Nikolaou, George Koufopoulos, Katerina Kambouri
Maria Aggelidou, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Democritus University of Thrace, University Hospital of Alexandroupolis, Alexandroupolis 68100, Greece
Savas P Deftereos, Department of Radiology, University Hospital of Alexandroupolis, Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupolis 68100, Greece
Dimitrios C Cassimos, Department of Pediatrics, Alexandroupolis University Hospital, Alexandroupolis 68100, Greece
Konstantinos Skarentzos, Student of Medicine, Alexandroupolis University Hospital, Alexandroupolis 68100, Greece
Panagoula Oikonomou, Christina Nikolaou, Department of Surgery, Alexandroupolis University Hospital, Alexandroupolis 68100, Greece
Artemis Angelidou, Student of Molecular Biology, Alexandroupolis University Hospital, Alexandroupolis 68100, Greece
George Koufopoulos, Department of Surgery, Laiko General Hospital, Athens 11527, Greece
Katerina Kambouri, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Alexandroupoli University Hospital, Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupoli 68132, Greece
Author contributions: Aggelidou M designed the article; Deftereos SP and Kambouri K wrote and revised the article; Cassimos DC revised and edited the article; Skarentzos K wrote the article and collected the data for review; Oikonomou P analyzed the data; Angelidou A, Nikolaou C and Koufopoulos G collected and analyzed the data; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the medical ethical committee of our hospital.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon this work noncommercially and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is noncommercial. See:
http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/bync/4.0/.
Corresponding author: Katerina Kambouri, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Alexandroupoli University Hospital, Democritus University of Thrace, Dragana, Alexandroupoli 68132, Greece. kampouri@med.duth.gr
Received: March 16, 2021
Peer-review started: March 16, 2021
First decision: May 6, 2021
Revised: May 20, 2021
Accepted: August 19, 2021
Article in press: August 19, 2021
Published online: September 9, 2021
BACKGROUND
The internet is a valuable tool for access to health-related information. There is limited literature regarding its use by parents of children with surgical conditions.
AIM
To investigate internet usage by parents seeking information about the surgical conditions of their offspring in relation to epidemiological factors such as family residential area and parental educational level and to subsequently review the literature regarding this topic.
METHODS
An anonymous questionnaire about internet usage was completed by eligible parents of children who were admitted to our clinic for minor surgical procedures during a six-month period.
RESULTS
Our results demonstrated that the internet has been mostly used by mothers for children’s health information. Google was the most commonly used search engine, while pediatricians were the first parental choice for ‘live’ information. Only one-quarter of the parents informed their doctor about the information found online. Nine of ten parents had a positive opinion of an official website managed by the doctors of our clinic. Our results mostly agreed with the international literature.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the establishment of official websites (designed and managed by specialists) that parents can access to receive appropriate health information is mandatory in the internet era.
Core Tip: The internet is a valuable tool for accessing health-related information. Parents of children with forthcoming surgery often seek online information about the specific conditions and symptoms of their children. Herein, we describe the influence of education and residence on the parental search for pediatric surgical information on the internet in a multicultural region of northern Greece, and we compare our results with the recent literature.
