Quality, understandability, and actionability of Arabic web-based content on periodontal and related oral surgical procedures: a cross-sectional infodemiological study.

Arabic-language health content has grown quickly online, but how well it serves patients considering periodontal and related oral surgery is unknown. This study assessed the quality, understandability, and actionability of Arabic web pages on six commonly searched procedures. We entered six lay Arabic search terms into Google, each in a single session, and screened the records against predefined criteria. Three calibrated dental interns appraised the eligible pages with the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool for Printable Materials (PEMAT-P) and the four JAMA benchmarks, scoring each subscale on the applicable items as the User's Guide directs. Groups were compared with Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests with Dunn post-hoc comparisons, and effect sizes are reported. We screened 222 records and included 148. Of the 74 exclusions, most were purely commercial content (n = 39) or unedited machine translation (n = 34). Commercial providers published 79 pages (53.4%), non-profit and governmental bodies 68 (45.9%), and an academic institution 1 (0.7%). Mean understandability was 62.6% (SD 14.7), with 42 pages (28.6%) adequate, and mean actionability 28.4% (SD 25.4), with 8 (5.5%) adequate. Pages met a mean of 0.93 (SD 1.00) JAMA benchmarks, two (1.4%) meeting all four and 63 (42.6%) none. Currency was met most often (41.9%), disclosure least (12.8%). In exploratory comparisons, attainment varied across terms for benchmarks (H = 16.16, p = 0.006) and understandability (H = 13.99, p = 0.016), but commercial and non-profit pages did not differ on any outcome. Arabic content on these procedures was moderately understandable but rarely actionable, seldom attributed or dated, and almost never from an academic source. These findings describe pages retrieved by six lay Google searches, not Arabic web content as a whole. The remedy is for dental faculties, professional associations, and health authorities serving Arabic-speaking populations to publish dated, attributed, step-by-step material indexed under the lay terms patients search.