Making sense of cancer risk calculators on the web.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Cancer risk calculators on the internet have the potential to provide users with valuable information about their individual cancer risk. However, the lack of oversight of these sites raises concerns about low quality and inconsistent information. These concerns led us to evaluate internet cancer risk calculators.

Design

After a systematic search to find all cancer risk calculators on the internet, we reviewed the content of each site for information that users should seek to evaluate the quality of a website. We then examined the consistency of the breast cancer risk calculators by having 27 women complete 10 of the breast cancer risk calculators for themselves. We also completed the breast cancer risk calculators for a hypothetical high- and low-risk woman, and c

SUBMITTER: Levy AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2359468 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature