Tips for savvy medical Web surfing

[Guest guest]

Tips for savvy medical Web surfing

By Cohen

CNN http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/02/21/ep.web.sites/index.html

When 's 4-year-old nephew, Nick, landed in the hospital with

a serious infection, her brother called her in a panic. isn't a

doctor. She's not a nurse. She's a librarian.

Finding accurate, reliable medical information on the Web can be a

daunting task.

Nick had cat scratch fever, and for weeks it was impervious to

antibiotics. Desperate, the doctor in Nick's small town wanted to use

a more powerful antibiotic that might save him -- but also might make

Nick deaf.

's brother hoped she could find something -- anything -- that

would save his son without disabling him. asked one of her

colleagues, a research specialist at the Texas Medical Center Library

in Houston, to search the medical literature. She came up with an

article about an antibiotic that worked against cat scratch fever but

wasn't toxic.

" We sent the doctor the whole article, and when he read it, he

said, 'This is great. I hadn't thought of that,' " said , the

president-elect of the Medical Library Association. Nick took the

antibiotic and recovered without complications.

So if you're trying to find medical information for yourself or

someone you love, and you're not lucky enough to have access to a

professional research librarian, what do you do?

" The Empowered Patient " assumes you already know the basics of good

Internet searching: .gov and .edu sites are to be trusted, as are

sites for major health centers (think MayoClinic.com) and health

organizations (such as the American Cancer Society's cancer.org).

" But there's so much more you can do. You can take this to a whole

new level, " says Jan Guthrie, director of The Health Resource, a for-

pay medical research service.

So for the Internet searcher hungry for more, here are some tips for

being a sophisticated surfer:

1. Use search engines that screen out the garbage for you

There's a lot of junk on the Internet. " It's the wild, wild West out

there, " says Alan Spielman, CEO of URAC, a company that certifies

health Web sites. " You really have to be alert as you go through

these sites. "

To get rid of the junk, use a search engine that looks only at

reputable sites that have been vetted by health professionals.

Dirline, run by the National Library of Medicine, is one such engine,

as are medlineplus.gov and Imedix.com. Healthfinder.gov searches for

information on government health Web sites.

2. Find smart bloggers with your disease

Some bloggers do an excellent job of linking to resources specific to

your disease. That goes for advocacy groups, too.

3. Invest 30 minutes in the pubmed.gov tutorial

Pubmed.gov searches the medical literature, but it isn't completely

intuitive. It's worth the time to learn how to use it by doing the

tutorial.

Nervous you won't understand the technical jargon in medical

articles? Don't be, says Guthrie. She advises reading the very

beginning of a study and the very end. " The conclusion will tell you

whether the treatment they studied was effective, moderately

effective, or not at all effective. "

In addition, the Medical Library Association, has brochures called

Deciphering Medspeak to help translate some of the more common

medical jargon.

Tara -Pope, a health columnist for the New York Times, found it

useful to specifically search for review articles on pubmed when she

was looking for treatments for her mother's esophageal cancer. Review

articles give an overview of the latest research on a particular

subject. " Review articles are an excellent way to get a lay of the

land and to get the big picture on a topic, " -Pope says.

To find review articles on pubmed, go to the " limits " tab and then

under " type of article " , check " review. "

4. Click on information about annual meetings

For example, let's say you just got a breast cancer diagnosis. You

could go to asco.org, the site for the American Society of Clinical

Oncology, and look at information on new breast cancer treatments

discussed at last year's meeting.

This is the way to get cutting-edge information, Guthrie

says. " Information on new treatments is presented at conferences six

to 12 months before it's published in a medical journal. "

Guthrie says she managed to find out about a new treatment for

tendonitis this way. " It wasn't even in the medical journals yet. We

found one doctor in New York who was doing it. If I had tendonitis,

it might've been worth traveling to him, " she says.

5. When in doubt about a Web site, click on " about us "

Sometimes it's clear who runs a Web site. Often it's not. Clicking

on " about us " should explain it. Knowing who's behind the information

you're reading (especially if they're trying to sell you something)

helps you evaluate whether the information is biased. If you can't

figure out who runs the site, don't use it.

And here perhaps are two of the most valuable pieces of advice: Use

Internet resources in combination. " An advocacy group or a review

article by itself is pretty useless, " -Pope says. " No one of

these works by itself. "

The second piece of advice: Don't expect the Internet to cure your

disease. " I wanted to find the needle in the haystack to cure my

mother, " -Pope says. " But information doesn't cure cancer. It

just leads you to the best doctor and the best options. "

-Pope never found the needle in the haystack. Her mother,

, died nine months after her diagnosis. But because of what

they found out on the Internet, -Pope and her family had

confidence she received the best possible care. " And feeling

confident in your care is no small thing, " she says.