An Appraisal of Printed Online Education Materials on Transoral Robotic Surgery (TORS) Online Education for Patients

PURPOSE: As both patients and large language models (LLMs) utilize online health information about medical conditions and treatments, ensuring the quality of these resources is increasingly important. This study evaluated the readability, understandability, and quality of printed online education materials (POEMs) pertaining to transoral robotic surgery (TORS). METHODS: Printed online education materials were identified using the Google term "transoral robotic surgery," with the first 50 websites selected for analysis. Readability was assessed using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), Flesch Reading Ease (FRE), and Gunning Fog Index (GFI). Understandability was evaluated using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool for Printable Materials (PEMAT-P), and overall quality was assessed using the DISCERN instrument. RESULTS: Mean [SD] FKGL, FRE, and GFI scores were 11.35 [1.90], 41 [10], and 13.85 [2.30], respectively. The mean [SD] PEMAT-P understandability score was 67% [11%]. The median [interquartile range (IQR)] DISCERN quality score was 41 [36-48]. These findings indicate that POEMs about TORS frequently demonstrated limited readability, understandability, and quality. CONCLUSION: Printed online educational materials related to TORS are often written at reading levels exceeding recommended standards and demonstrate suboptimal understandability and quality. Efforts to improve the readability, understandability, and quality of online TORS educational materials may enhance patient comprehension and support informed decision-making. Such improvements may also benefit the broader digital health information environment, as publicly available online resources increasingly serve as source material for AI-assisted health information tools.