Readability Analysis of Online Patient Resources for Liposuction

Goals/Purpose:  
More patients are searching the internet for health information than ever before.  As patients strive to become informed, active participants in their healthcare, the barrier posed by inadequate functional health literacy is being increasingly recognized.  Nearly half of American adults have poor or marginal health literacy; as such, the National Institutes of Health and American Medical Association have recommended that patient information should be written at a 6th grade level.  The aim of this study is to identify the most commonly used online information about liposuction and to evaluate its readability relative to average American literacy.

Methods/Technique:  
An internet search was performed on the two largest online search engines using the term "liposuction" and the ten most popular websites common to both were identified.  Cookies were disabled and sponsored results excluded.  All relevant, patient-directed articles immediately available from the parent sites were downloaded and formatted into plain text.  A total of 80 articles were analyzed using ten established readability tests.

Results/Complications:  
Analysis of 80 articles from the ten most popular patient websites about liposuction revealed an overall average readability of 13.6.  The mean Raygor Estimate was 14th grade with a range from 9th to 17th grade.

Conclusion:  
Patient resources for online information about liposuction are uniformly above the target 6th grade reading level and are likely too difficult for a large number of Americans to understand.