LUNG CANCER AND CIGARETTE SMOKING: INTERNET AND WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES.

Frederic W. Grannis Jr. MD, Methodist Hospital of Southern California, Arcadia, California, USA.

Oral Presentation: 4th Central European Lung Cancer Conference, Gdansk and Gdynia, Poland September 26-29, 1996.

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of the study was to investigate the resources available to the clinician involved in the care of cigarette smokers and patients with lung cancer, on the Internet, and to develop a site on the World Wide Web (WWW) for dissemination of information on smoking cessation and treatment of lung cancer to patients, medical students and physicians in practice.

Materials and Methods: Using various search engines, WWW pages pertaining to lung cancer and cigarette smoking were identified, searched for content and indexed.

A WWW page was then created, using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) entitled Lung Cancer and Cigarette Smoking Web Page, (URL http://Ourworld.compuserve.com/HomePages/LungCancer) consisting of a brief introduction and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), containing multiple questions on topics related to lung cancer. A brief answer to each question in the FAQ was supplemented by links to the various useful WWW pages identified during the search. The links allow the user simple, rapid access to a large number of WWW pages around the world.

Results: Within a few days, multiple electronic mail responses were received from people from many different countries with comments, questions and submitted material. Feedback was primarily from people having difficulty in smoking cessation who wanted further hints and advice in this endeavor.

Conclusion: The Internet and WWW provide a unique resource for patients, students and physicians to learn and communicate with each other their questions and knowledge about lung cancer. Unlike a book, a WWW page can be continuously updated, is unlimited in size and complexity, has the ability to transmit not only text, but high quality color graphics, sound, animation and motion pictures. It also allows rapid two way communication and collaboration between author and reader by electronic mail.