How to look for high -quality medical information during the pandemic - and after it

Instructions "Medusa"

We first published this material in March 2020. Exactly a year later, we updated it a little, adding relevant links.

To be able to look for high -quality medical information is a useful skill in any case. And at the moment when there are so many frightening messages around, this is especially important. Therefore, "Medusa" prepared special instructions. In these recommendations, as in our work in general, we adhere to the principles of evidence -based medicine. This means that medical decisions should be made on the basis of the best of the existing scientific data, the experience of the doctor and the patient's values. When a person is involved in decision -making and is well informed, this helps him to be healthier. Therefore, competent doctors try to educate patients and welcome their self -education.

All Medusa materials about coronavirus are open to distribute Creative Commons CC BY for distribution. You can reprint them! The license does not apply to the photo.

First, the most important thing right now: where to look for medical information about coronavirus?

A new coronavirus infection is the case when you can use the resources that it makes no sense to contact in everyday life to find out how to treat SARS or warts. The World Health Organization (WHO) is obliged to engage in it. Therefore, she now has a lot of useful and relevant information on how to protect itself, how to prepare countries and how to treat this disease. Much has been translated into Russian .

All recommendations of medical organizations regarding the new coronavirus infection are collected here .

Now about everything else (but in fact about the Covid-19-too).

Try to look for everything in English

We hope you have not closed our instructions as soon as you read it. Unfortunately, the world language of medicine is English. On it, international medical organizations publish their recommendations, articles in the top scientific journals come out on it. In addition, in English -speaking countries, the formation of patients is well developed, so there are many excellent sites on medical topics (by the way, some American have versions in Spanish).

Information in Russian, even in official sources, is often quite controversial.

Fortunately, now there is no big problem in reading English-speaking resources-it is enough to use online translators. This, for example, is Yandex.Piser and Google Translator . They can translate entire pages, and the result is very decent.

Choose good sources and do not use ordinary search engines

With the help of the American state website, MedlinePlus can find links to useful information posted on various high -quality sites. They are selected according to many criteria . But the key can be attributed to:

• It is clear who makes the site and what money. If this is not indicated, it is likely that the authors hide a conflict of interest.
• The main goal of the site is educational. If you immediately sell dietary supplements or products for a special diet, then it is obvious to doubt the impartiality of the authors.
• The information is constantly updated, and it is indicated when the next time it will be checked. Data in medicine can change very quickly, and the text about the treatment of hepatitis C, written in 2011, can be hopelessly outdated in 2020.

There is also a very good sign - if the sources of information are indicated. Usually they are arranged throughout the text or are given by a list at the end.

On some high -quality sites, you can see the icon of the independent non -profit organization Health on the Net (Hon), which has been operating since 1996. The icon is obtained by sites that have passed certification . This is not to say that this is a very reliable criterion, but Hon takes into account the basic principles when evaluating the site.

Whatever medical information you are interested in, it is always better to start not with an ordinary search engine, but with specific sites. So higher, the probability that you will immediately receive reliable information. Moreover, it is better to use several sources at once, because in some information can be updated faster. And, in the end, everyone can be mistaken in something.

Trust common sense

Subjective criteria can be legitimate. For example, if you feel that the author of the article is too praised by some treatment method and is silent about the shortcomings, then this is bad. The American food control and medicine control department has a good sign of quackery: if something sounds too good to be true, it is most likely not true.

"Medusa" can recommend several sites that meet the necessary criteria and which we use ourselves:

• MedlinePlus.gov
• NHS.UK (website of the British National Health Service)
• Uptodate.com . The site has a free version for patients, as well as a paid version for doctors and paid for patients (The Basics is the shortest texts written in a very simple language). Subscription holders can give access to other people for 30 days or share specific articles. It is assumed that doctors will do this way, if they need to give something to read something to patients.

Now MedLineplus and the NHS website have special dies with links to good resources about a new coronavirus infection. Uptodate posted all articles about her for doctors.

If you do not find answers, try to use the resources for doctors. But be careful

There are much more information on the sites for doctors, although everything is written in a much more complex language. In addition to Uptodate, Medscape is very popular with doctors. It is available free of charge, but registration may be required. There is not only information about various diseases and medicines, but also news, as well as scientific articles.

However, scientific articles are best sought on another resource - Pubmed . Through this site there is access to all articles on medicine and biology published in reviewed scientific journals. In other words, other scientists checked these texts before the publication.

However, even such a check is not a guarantee that the article is of high quality. Remember that it is extremely rare in medicine that only one study decides something: usually decisions are made on the basis of several or even a whole massif. Therefore, one article can rather serve as information on reflection than a guide to action.

If desired, you can find a scientific article to confirm any position, so you should carefully evaluate the quality of work. This is a separate skill that you can start training using the Understanding Health Research .

Study the leaderships and recommendations of medical organizations. Come to them too critically

You can look for them just in the search engine, and in Pubmed, having configured the Guideline filter ("leadership"). But these documents are also of different qualities. Be sure to look at the date of publication - sometimes they are not updated for a long time. In addition, you can find out from your doctor what foreign societies are considered the most authoritative in its field. Often on the sites of good American organizations there is information for patients, and therefore you can enter such a resource through MedlinePlus.

Recommendations in Russian are also good - sometimes it is just a translation of foreign ones, sometimes your own. But it often happens that these documents are advised to be treated with drugs without proven effectiveness. Sometimes good and very strange recommendations come from one Russian professional society.

Subscribe to the media and medical bloggers. But here be especially careful!

If you want to constantly read something on medical topics and in general, then it will not hurt to subscribe to good media and blogs. In addition, the listed sites have social networks and mailings. By the way, the latest information about the new coronavirus infection often appears in WHO social networks, and not on the site.

However, evaluating the quality of the media and blogs can be even more difficult than the quality of educational resources like uptodate. Nevertheless, certain criteria exist:

• If the blogger does not confirm his words with links to sources and rests on a personal example, this is not a very good sign. Even if we are talking about video or podcast, links can always be published somewhere and say about it. True, the presence of links is not a guarantee of the reliability of information: the links can be written differently, or the mentioned studies will be of poor quality.
• Also pay attention to the education and experience of a blogger. If this is a person who has long and actively writes about medicine, then this is better than when an expert in a new coronavirus infection is a person who wrote until recently about biology, astrophysics or generally about everything at once.
• Even people with medical education can not always be: a) good doctors, b) well not to understand in their field. A gynecologist telling about the intricacies of intensive therapy with a new coronavirus infection will rather be mistaken than a resuscitator. Even if he speaks very convincing and the publication has 10 million likes.

As for the media, the Health News Review, which has evaluated the quality of journalistic articles for many years, offers different criteria , including:

• whether the pros and cons of the test of the test, medicine or methodology are indicated in the text;
• whether the quality of evidence is evaluated;
• whether the journalist of readers intimidates;
• Is the material based on only a press release;
• Whether the journalist addressed independent sources.

Among the media who write a lot and well about medicine and, in particular, about the current pandemic - Stat and Vox . The "Medusa" recently has a special section on coronavirus.

Daria Sargsyan