Quality of Information About Bariatric Surgery on the Internet: A Two-Continent Comparison of Website Content

Background Many patients considering bariatric surgery will obtain medical information through the Internet. The type and quality of information patients access may vary significantly by geographic region. Methods Searches were performed using commercial search engines in both the United States of America (USA) and United Arab Emirates (UAE) using search terms “bariatric surgery” and “weight loss surgery.” Quality was assessed using the scoring systems previously published by DISCERN (United Kingdom (UK)), the Journal of the American Medical Association Benchmark (JAMA; USA), and Expanded Ensuring Quality Information for Patients (EQIP) (UK). Results Website types were more evenly distributed in UAE, though physician websites were also the most common ( n = 25, 25%). Within the USA, most websites analyzed were from physicians ( n = 32, 32%), followed by academic sources ( n = 26, 26%). Academic websites were the highest average quality in the USA ( p