Trabeculectomy: An assessment of the quality and readability of online patient information

Many patients now refer to the internet as a source of patient information. We wanted to assess the quality and readability of online information pertaining to trabeculectomy. We interrogated 3 popular search engines for the terms “trabeculectomy” and “glaucoma surgery”. We analysed the websites against the EQIP (ensuring quality information to patients) and the Flesch Kincaid reading ease score. We found that the mean quality of puplications was poor with a higher than recommended reading grade. Academic sources had a high quality score compared to sources with a commercial interest. It is importat that we guide patients to high quality sources of information on the internet.