Study Finds Web Health Searches Fuel Fears
Posted on December 5, 2008
Everyone likes to search for information about their ailments online. There's always detailed information all kinds of diseases and conditions. There are also online communities filled with people dealing with similar ailments and illnesses. The BBC reports on a study that found some of this online research may feed health fears and breed a "generation of cyberchondriacs." The study surveyed 515 Microsoft employees about their health-related searching.
The researchers found Web searches for common symptoms such as headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare.It seems the study only found the obvious. Sure a search for "chest pain" or even "itchy rash" can send you toward some very serious conditions if you search hard enough. The study is missing the point as to how valuable all this information is that people could not easily get before the Internet. No one is suggesting the Internet replaces your physician. It's important that people have access to all this information so they can conduct their own research and so they can communicate with - and learn from - others suffering from similar conditions and diseases.Searching for "chest pain" or "muscle twitches" returned terrifying results with the same frequency as less serious ailments, even though the chances of having a heart attack or a fatal neurodegenerative condition is far lower than having simple indigestion or muscle strain, for example.
About a third of the 515 Microsoft employees who answered a survey on their medical search habits "escalated" their follow-up searches to explore serious, rarer illnesses.