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Department of Anesthesiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520-8051 Orillia, Ontario, Canada
We appreciate the interest of Drs. Hernandez-Borges (1) and Tramer (2) in the Internet and unmoderated discussion groups. Most physicians discover that unpublished, but highly experienced, colleagues can also be excellent teachers. Although recognized experts frequently participate in mailing lists, anesthesia professionals who do not publish in traditional journals also post regularly and are frequently well informed and helpful (3,4). Posts from well published authorities may indicate that the overall quality of these lists is high, but users should evaluate all author on the merits of their ideas, and not only on how many papers the authors have written.
In his editorial, Dr. Tramer questions the quality of posts to the Anesthesiology Discussion Group because its owner refuses to take responsibility for its contents. Of course, physicians should use information from many sources, including textbooks, journals, lectures, and the Internet and should not rely entirely on any one source. Messages posted to unmoderated discussion groups are not reviewed before distribution. Accepting responsibility for them is not feasible, because doing so would open the owner to legal action for events that are beyond his or her control. Moreover, even the publishers of printed journals do not usually accept responsibility for authors’ statements
Disclaimer for Anesthesia & Analgesia: The statements and opinions contained in the articles of Anesthesia & Analgesia are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of the International Anesthesia Research Society, Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, Society for Pediatric Anesthesia, Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia, or Lippincot Williams & Wilkins...
Dr. Tramer further states that the absence of intermediaries such as editors and publishers implies that information obtained from Internet resources is of poor quality. A brief review of the digests of the Anesthesiology Discussion Group and LARA-L reveals that anesthesia professionals use these lists to share their opinions about new drugs and techniques and to help each other deal with clinical and administrative problems (3,4). Although this information is not peer-reviewed, it is of more than "entertainment" value. There are also high-quality, peer-reviewed Internet medical resources, including GASNet, online journals, such as Internet Journal of Anesthesiology, and printed journals, such as Anesthesiology and Anesthesia and Analgesia (5).
The Internet is not a substitute for traditional media. It is simply another form of communication that has already begun to make an important contribution to anesthesiology.
References
Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Hospital Universitario de Canarias Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain {blreply}Dr. Tramer did not wish to respond to these letters.
In a previous issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia (1), we compared several Internet anesthesiology and intensive care mailing lists regarding the publishing capacity of their subscribers. Some authors (2) have shown that it may be difficult to evaluate the subscribers’ opinions, taking into account only their prestige as authors. We agree that the best way to evaluate the information in these forums, as in others, is a critical reading of them. Nevertheless, we believe that it is a good starting point for novel subscribers of these mailing lists to know that they can find prestigious experts in the field among the subscribers.
Whether peer-reviewed or not, the commentaries on these medical forums may be useful for the subscribers for many personal reasons. In any case, mailing lists subscribers should put the opinions of other subscribers into context and take care when they use them in their clinical activity.
We also made comparisons among the mailing lists and the most established medical journals in anesthesiology and intensive care medicine (1). When the Internet incorporates its own methods of self-evaluation, such as citation analysis and examination of usage statistics of the different resources (3), these kinds of comparisons among the printed and the electronic media will probably be unnecessary. Meanwhile, traditional peer-reviewed medical journals are the standard with which we must compare other publishing media in medicine.
The Internet has brought more than an additional means of communication. Its publishing freedom, rapidness in distribution of data, and multimedia capabilities are changing the way we understand medical publishing. The point is not to cope with the Internet (2), but to learn which capabilities of this new medium could be applied to our academic publishing media.
References
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