Iowa woman uses the Internet
to locate medical expertise, tame anxiety

April 27, 2004

By Cindy Bussanmas
Iowa's Internet

DES MOINES, Iowa -- People who have received bad news relating to their health know the overwhelming rush of desperation inherent with the unknown.

"When my MRI showed I had a brain tumor, I was scared and I wanted immediate answers," said Lori Bogart, a long-time Iowa resident, wife and mother. "So, I immediately went to the Net."

Bogart first looked up doctors who were specialists with her particular kind of brain tumor. She accessed the Mayo Clinic Web site and typed in her diagnosis. The search results provided a list of doctors who were experts in the field of her diagnosis. The Internet led her to a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic.

"The Internet helped put my mind at ease and helped me plan for what lied ahead," Bogart said.

Traditional research would have involved physically going to the public library. "Typing up words and receiving immediate response on the Internet was much easier and less stressful than driving to the library and looking up information in catalogs," Bogart said.

"The Mayo Web site provided information about symptoms, treatment options and even contact information about how to schedule an appointment," Bogart said.

Bogart is not the only person going to the Internet for answers about their health. According to a poll by Harris Interactive, "Almost 100 million adults go online to look for health care information (Harris calls them cyberchondriacs). On average, they do so three times a month."

The poll shows the general public is interested in getting information about diseases or treatments or staying healthy.

Bogart did a lot of research about her tumor on the Internet. "Depending on the Web site, information access came relatively easy," Bogart said. Some of the information she found on the Internet was broad, and some information was more detailed and technical.

"The information was sometimes too technical but when you have a diagnosis like I did, too technical was not an issue. Layman's terms doesn't always cut it -- you want to know everything you can," Bogart said.

Conducting research on the Internet also made it so Bogart was an informed patient. She was able to ask her doctors intelligent questions about her condition. She said she feels that if people are informed about their condition before they talk to their doctors, the doctors respect that and they also might think the patient has a medical background. "They (the doctors) seemed to offer more explanation, and they were not on the defense," Bogart said.

The doctors at Mayo determined that Bogart's original diagnosis, pituitary adenoma, was incorrect. "My actual diagnosis after going to Mayo was brain stem meningioma," Bogart said.

After radiation treatment at the Mayo Clinic, Bogart made a full recovery. "If it was not for the Internet, I probably would not have gone to Mayo for my treatment, and that would have been a mistake."

According to Harris Interactive, the metholodogy was: "Conducted by telephone within the United States between March 22 – 26, 2001, among a nationwide cross section of 1011 adults of whom 675 are online. Figures for age, sex, race, education, number of adults and number of voice/telephone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. In theory, with a sample of this size (675), one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 4 percentage points of what they would be if the entire adult population had been polled with complete accuracy. Unfortunately, there are several other possible sources of error in all polls or surveys that are probably more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. They include refusals to be interviewed (non-response), question wording and question order, interviewer bias, weighting by demographic control data and screening (e.g., for likely voters). It is difficult or impossible to quantify the errors that may result from these factors."

Harris Interactive: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=229