EC Dental Science

Objective: To review and evaluate the level of information on the oral manifestations of third molar impaction that is available online, as well as its quality, readability, and content.

Methods: An online search was conducted using three different search engines and two distinct search terms about the oral manifestations of third molar impaction. The first 100 websites for each search engine and term were analyzed in duplicate. We use the available websites if there are fewer than 100 websites in each engine. Three different tools were used to assess the quality of each website. First, the DISCERN tool, second, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) website analysis standards, and third, the Health on the Net (HON) Seal. Four different measures were used to evaluate readability: the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), the Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), and the Coleman-Liau Index (CLI).

Results: 19 websites out of 600 remained after applying the exclusion criteria for the two keywords among three different search engines. overall DISCERN scores for all 19 websites were 2.2 ± 1.4. The HON seal was presented only on two websites. Only 5 (26.3%) out of 19 websites achieved all four JAMA criteria. The FRES measure revealed that only 7 out of 19 websites had a standard level of readability, while the remaining 12 had readability scores ranging from difficult to very difficult.

Conclusion: The Information about third molar impaction that is currently available online is typically of poor quality and contains little information about the related oral manifestations. The readability of the information that was available online failed to meet the standards that would enable the public to easily understand and read it. The current study's shortcomings must be addressed to create a web-based resource for the oral manifestation of third molar complications.

 Keywords: Third Molar; Wisdom Tooth; Impaction; Online Information; Quality; Readability

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