Many people turn to popular health information websites during pregnancy. We analyzed the most popular consumer websites for health information to see how complete their information was for people experiencing miscarriage.
We found that, while the advice on these websites was mostly complete, the lack of information on treatment options may affect patients’ ability to make informed choices about their care. Several of these sites also conflated tips for a healthy pregnancy as ways to prevent miscarriage, which is usually not preventable.
Most websites assumed that everyone having a miscarriage has a desired pregnancy, which is not always true. Taking the patient’s preferences into account may allow clinicians to start treatment, including the use of medication before the miscarriage diagnosis is 100% certain.
Health information websites would better serve people coming to their website for miscarriage information by ensuring information on their pages reflect the best scientific evidence.
Read more about the study, “Miscarriage information available on the internet: A content analysis of leading consumer websites,” in the journal Contraception.