Youtube videos for the most commonly applied radionuclide treatments: sufficient for patients as an information source?

Abstract

Objectives YouTube is one of the most popular online sources of information for patients. The purpose of the study is to analyze the quality of YouTube videos about the most commonly applied radionuclide treatments. Method Related radionuclide therapy videos were searched on YouTube in October 2021. The quality of the videos was assessed by using the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark criteria, the DISCERN Scale and the Global Quality Scale (GQS). Results A total of 473 videos were assessed and 270 were included in the study according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. According to the GQS score, videos were categorized as high-quality (n:63, 23.33%), intermediate quality (n:118, 43.70%) and low-quality (n:89, 32.96 %) groups. The findings of our study showed that the highest number of video views and comments were in the low-quality group. In addition; the number of video likes, views and comments were the lowest in the high-quality video group. The most viewed and commented as well as most liked videos and the videos of highest video power index scores were nonphysician sourced videos. The most quality videos were the physician-sourced videos in terms of JAMA, DISCERN and GQS scores. Conclusion Although high-quality videos about radionuclide treatments on YouTube may enlighten and motivate patients positively; it should be kept in mind that improper information may also be uploaded to this platform. Under the guidance of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine, it is necessary to generate an official video in English with multilingual subtitles.

YouTube as a source of patient information on positron emission tomography

“…For this purpose, content of medical videos may be evaluated with any of the parameters of JAMA, GQS and DISCERN. Studies have reported that there is a high positive correlation between these three parameters (18)(19)(20). In our study, significant positive correlations were found between JAMA score, GQS score, and DISCERN score.…”

“…Similar to these studies, we found that 36 (48.0%) of the 75 videos included in our study were of high quality. However, there are also studies in the literature in which most of the videos are evaluated as low quality (12,17,19) and medium quality (20), which is inconsistent with these findings .…”

“…This raises concerns about YouTube, which has significant potential in sharing medical information to public (5). In the literature, there are many studies that analyze the quality of the medical videos on YouTube (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). However, as far as we know, there is no similar study analyzing YouTube videos about PET/CT.…”