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The Internet is evolving as a powerful source of medical information for patients, family members, and health care providers; however, critical analyses of this information are generally lacking. This investigation was performed to ascertain the sources, nature, and accuracy of information acquired via searches on the Internet for ten common neurosurgical topics (brain tumor, cerebral aneurysm, degenerative spine disease, discogenic back pain, epilepsy, head injury, hydrocephalus, spinal cord injury, and spinal cord tumor). Eleven popular general search engines and four popular Internet guides were reviewed; Excite, AOL, NetFind, and Magellan provided the most relevant list of matches (" hits") for these topics. Detailed analyses were performed for the first 25 hits generated by Exite searches for each topic. Each was categorized according to source and nature of information. A three-point …