Recommended

American College of Surgeons – Patient Resources

The Patient Education section of the American College of Surgeons website provides general information for patients undergoing surgical procedures. Although there is little information on the site, there are links to excellent detailed disease-specific information. This site could be recommended as a starting place for anyone preparing for an impending surgery.

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Review Date: 12/2/2019

Scoring

Ease of Use

Navigating the website can be tricky due to the organization of such a wealth of material. Each link leads to another page featuring 3-4 times the amount of links as the original, some of which further lead to other links and resources.

Visual Design

Bare but clean visual design. Not many graphics or engaging multimedia. Overall it gives off a clinical impression, certainly in-line with the organization's image.

Quality

A lot of the site's content exists as links to other websites. Invariably these are high quality sources like the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, PubMed, Lab Tests Online, etc. The content featured on this website is helpful and patient-friendly. Helpful operation brochures are available for patients undergoing appendectomy, colonoscopy, hernia repair, and other common procedures.

Credibility

This website publishes dozens of surgery-related brochures, and each features the names of medical reviewers as well as dates of revision. The pre-surgical, informed consent, and pain management information does not list authors and only some show the last update. The reputation of the organization gives credibility to the site.

Pros

  1. Helpful brochures for patients about post-operative pain, medications and surgery, and 9 common procedures
  2. Easy to read information about informed consent, preparing for surgery, and post-surgical pain
  3. Detailed information about home care of central lines, feeding tubes, ostomies, and wounds
  4. Users can search for surgeons and treatment centers by name, location, or specialty and includes educational background, relevant certifications, and areas of expertise

Cons

  1. Navigation requires some patience due to the abundance of sections and subsections
  2. Much of the information patients will need requires going to other healthcare websites

Profile

Sponsors / Affiliations: The American College of Surgeons, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit professional association of surgeons founded in 1912

Accreditations: None

Additional Features: Links to MedLine Plus and other reputable sites, downloadable brochures about specific procedures, FAQs, videos

Languages: English, some Spanish and Italian

Contact: postmaster@facs.org