The quality and content of websites in the UK advertising aligner therapy: are standards being met?

Alsaqabi, Farah; Madadian, Matin Ali; Pandis, Nikolaos; Cobourne, Martyn T; Seehra, Jadbinder (2023). The quality and content of websites in the UK advertising aligner therapy: are standards being met? (In Press). British dental journal Springer Nature 10.1038/s41415-023-5740-x

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Aims To evaluate the quality of information and compliance with General Dental Council (GDC) ethical advertising guidelines for English-language orthodontic websites providing orthodontic treatment with aligners in the United Kingdom (UK).Materials and methods The term 'orthodontic aligners or braces' was entered into the Google online search engine. The first 100 English language orthodontic websites (practice or company) were pooled. Both the quality (DISCERN instrument) and compliance with GDC ethical advertising guidelines were assessed. Frequency distributions and the overall summative DISCERN score for each website were calculated.Results The overall mean DISCERN score was 42.9 (SD = 9.4). The quality of information was only rated as good-excellent for 16% of websites and only 11% of websites showed full compliance with GDC guidelines on ethical advertising. A link to the GDC/authority website (75%), the date when the website was last updated (72%), and the practice complaints policy (66%) were not commonly provided. The country of qualification, a statement of whether practices provide NHS or private treatment or a combination of both, and the date when the website was last updated, were significant predictors for the overall quality based on DISCERN score.Conclusions The quality of information provided on websites providing aligner therapy and their compliance with GDC guidelines on ethical advertising was suboptimal. An improvement in both areas is required.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > School of Dental Medicine > Department of Orthodontics

UniBE Contributor:

Pandis, Nikolaos

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health

ISSN:

1476-5373

Publisher:

Springer Nature

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

16 May 2023 14:56

Last Modified:

17 May 2023 15:36

Publisher DOI:

10.1038/s41415-023-5740-x

PubMed ID:

37186107

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/182590

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/182590

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