The Readability of Online Patient Abdominoplasty Resources

Goals/Purpose:  
Limited functional health literacy is recognized as an important contributor to health disparities in the United States.  As internet access becomes more universal, there is increasing concern about whether patients with poor or marginal literacy can access understandable information about their healthcare.  As such, the National Institutes of Health and American Medical Association recommend that patient information be written at a sixth grade level.  This study aims to identify the most popular online resources for patient information about abdominoplasty and to evaluate their readability in the context of average American literacy.

Methods/Technique:  
The two largest internet search engines were queried for "tummy tuck surgery" to simulate a patient search in lay terms.  The ten most popular sites common to both search engines were identified, and all relevant articles immediately available from the main sites were downloaded.  Sponsored results were excluded.  Readability analysis of the articles was performed using ten established tests.

Results/Complications:
 Online information about abdominoplasty from the ten most popular publically available websites had an overall average readability of 12th grade.  The average Fry readability score was 13, with a range from 7th to 17th grade. 

Conclusion:  
Online patient resources about abdominoplasty are uniformly above the recommended target readability level, and are likely too difficult for many patients to understand.