Assessment of an electronic mailing list for orthopaedic and trauma surgery

Medical electronic mailing lists have grown rapidly with the evolution of t he Internet. The purpose of this paper was to assess the content and academ ic quality and of an electronic mail discussion list "Orthopod" dedicated t o research in orthopaedic and trauma surgery A retrospective analysis was u ndertaken of four months of web-based archive of communication through the Orthopod mailing list http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/Orthopod At the end o f this study period there were 505 members of the Orthopod list. The main o utcome measures of this paper were number of messages, type of messages, nu mber of contributors, designation of contributor and number of topics refer enced. On average 276 messages were posted each month. The mean number of m essages per contributor per month only varied between 2.3 and 2.5. On avera ge 54% of message threads contained at least one reference. At least 77% of the patient history and general threads had input from senior orthopaedic staff. The quantity of information on the Internet need not be a substitute for quality in orthopaedic and trauma surgery mailing lists. The Orthopod Electronic mail discussion list is another medium for the circulation of go od quality surgical information. Orthopod provides a unique international e lectronic forum list for trauma and orthopaedic surgeons worldwide.