Background: The prevalence of chronic pain has increased in Brazil. In general, people suffering from this condition do not know where or how to obtain appropriate treatment. On the other hand, there is a lack of specialized professionals in the field. The internet thus becomes a useful tool to provide chronic pain sufferers with more information about their condition. Even so, international research has concluded that most chronic pain content is of low or medium quality. This research aims to investigate if Brazilian patients use the internet to research chronic pain and if they worry about the quality of the information they find.
Method: This descriptive research was carried out through an electronic questionnaire between January and February of 2019, containing 16 questions about using the internet to obtaining information about pain. To verify how an individual evaluates the quality of the information, HONcode and DISCERN’s instrument proposals were both used as references. The sample consisted of 164 people with pain, 90.2% had chronic pain, 66.9% had married, 82.1% had women, the average age was 40.6 years.
Results: Of the participants, 90.1% of the participants accessed the internet on a daily basis and 90.5% used the Internet to research chronic pain. Most used media: 94.8% search tools, 59% Facebook, 49.3% YouTube. Regarding the quality of the information: 88.1% were concerned about it; 85.6% stated that the author had thecnical prowess, 78.8% observing whether the language was easy to understand and 43.3% whether the information is up-to-date. Of those who used the internet, 92.3% said that the research helped them deal with their pain in some way, and 91.8% answered that they would use it again to research the subject.
Conclusion: In light of the results and the existence of mostly low- and medium-quality information about pain on the internet, it is fundamental to provide clarification to patients so that they can evaluate the quality of the information. Health practitioners must also learn to use the online tools as allies in fostering health and must commit to developing  better content to improve the information available.

BRAZILIAN INTERNET RESEARCH ON CHRONIC PAIN: AN OVERVIEW