CIGARRO ELETRÔNICO: ANÁLISE DAS INFORMAÇÕES DISPONÍVEIS PARA A POPULAÇÃO NO GOOGLE

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.743112518035

• Palavras-chave: Nicotina; Evali; Vape; Fumo

• Keywords: Nicotine; Evali; Vape; Smoking

• Abstract: Introduction: The electronic cigarette was created with the intention of helping people quit smoking traditional cigarettes, proposed as an alternative that provides sensations similar to smoking tobacco, defended as less harmful to health, as it diverts smokers and passive smokers from traditional cigarettes. However, its use has been linked to cardiovascular diseases, respiratory issues, cancer, and lung injury associated with electronic cigarette use (EVALI). Furthermore, since the vast majority contain nicotine in their composition, they can lead to addiction. The electronic cigarette has a modern design, colors, and flavors, in addition to the so-called vapor tricks, tricks made with vapor that are shared on social media, attracting new users, especially younger ones, who are a vulnerable population. Objective: The objective of this work is to analyze the information about electronic cigarettes available to the population on Google. Material and Methods: A descriptive research was conducted. The Google search tool was chosen due to its notable popularity in Brazil regarding information searches. For information retrieval, the following expressions were used: “what is an electronic cigarette,” “what is the difference between an electronic cigarette and a regular cigarette,” and “does the electronic cigarette harm.” Thus, only the first ten results obtained from the search were considered. To analyze the quality of the information on the websites, three criteria (technical, comprehensiveness, and accuracy) containing quality indicators were established. A checklist was created that assigns a score of 10 to each indicator, totaling a maximum score of 100 points. Results and Discussion: It was observed that a large part of the websites did not have health professionals responsible for the information provided and did not present the scientific sources that supported the information. The average score of the websites was 46%, and none achieved the maximum score of 100 points. Regarding health problems related to electronic cigarettes, the potential addiction was mentioned by the majority of the sites, while the disease EVALI was the least cited, even though it is the main lung disease related to the use of electronic cigarettes. Conclusion: Considering the observed aspects, most of the evaluated websites do not have adequate information quality about electronic cigarettes. Therefore, there is a noticeable need for the development of mechanisms to evaluate the quality of information available on the Google search engine, especially on topics related to health promotion and disease prevention, with a focus on the use of electronic cigarettes.