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Richard J. Bold, MD; Eric Liederman, MD, MPH

Arch Surg. 2006;141:1182.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Access to electronic health information and communication is no longer a future anticipation of patients but a current expectation. In this issue, Grazi breaks new ground by reporting his observations of electronic communications to surgeons via a European Web site written in a non-English language (Italian), related specifically to a non–primary care topic, surgical hepatopancreatobiliary disease, and in which the physician recipients had no prior clinical relationship with the patients. Almost all reports to date in the scientific and lay press about e-mail and Web messaging between patients and providers have focused on primary care in the United States and on communication written in English.

Remarkably, given the relative nonavailability of physician-patient electronic messaging in Europe, the Web site was visited 40 648 times over 27 months, and 1247 patients or proxies sent 1788 electronic messages. The senders' ages ranged, in years, from . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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RELATED ARTICLE

Web Relationships Between Physicians and Individuals Seeking Information on Hepatopancreatobiliary Diseases
Gian Luca Grazi
Arch Surg. 2006;141(12):1176-1182.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT