When his wife was diagnosed with cancer, Skyler B. Johnson, MD, did what many concerned spouses do. He consulted Google.
A medical student at the time, Johnson had one advantage many panicked Googlers lack —he could recognize bogus information when he saw it.
Unfortunately, it was everywhere.
“I came away from that experience with quite a bit of empathy for patients,” Johnson, a physician-scientist at Huntsman Cancer Institute and assistant professor of radiation oncology at University of Utah, told Healio. “I encounter a lot of patients through my oncology practice who believe misinformation they read online and through social media, and it has led to delays in their diagnosis and treatment. It has led to refusal of proven cancer treatments and, ultimately, their early deaths.”
Now, Johnson — whose wife is doing well — is shining a light on the pervasiveness of the problem.
He and his colleagues at Huntsman conducted a study, published in July in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, that showed one-third of the most popular cancer treatment articles on social media include inaccurate information. Moreover, most of the misinformation identified had the potential to harm patients by advocating approaches that could have a negative effect on treatment quality and survival.
“If you talk to most oncologists, I think they will tell you that this is one of the more upsetting encounters we have with patients — especially for people with curable cancers,” Johnson said.
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Read Full Story: https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20210825/inaccurate-harmful-cancer-information-prevalent-on-social-media
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