YouTube for Cosmetic Plastic Surgery: An Effective Patient Resource?

YouTube is increasingly being utilized as a major educational resource by patients. It is important for plastic surgeons to understand the quality and characteristics of videos that patients are likely to view about procedures of interest.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of the videos that patients are most likely to encounter when searching YouTube for the most common cosmetic plastic surgery procedures.

Based on Google Trends data, the most searched medical and colloquial terms were identified for common cosmetic surgery procedures: "abdominoplasty," "tummy tuck," "breast augmentation," "boob job," "liposuction," "lipo," "mastopexy," "breast lift," "reduction mammoplasty," and "breast reduction." On YouTube, videos were searched by relevance (default) and view count; the top 10 results were collected in each group and rated according to the DISCERN criteria. Each video was assigned an overall and bias DISCERN score (DS). A score of 1 indicates high bias and low overall quality and a score of 5 indicates the opposite.

In total, 143 unique videos were identified, which resulted in a mean bias DS of 2.29 and mean overall DS of 2.44. Seventy-two videos included US board-certified plastic surgeons and 58 were classified as patient experience. Videos had 667,373,209 total views and were an average of 4.27 years old. Videos including US board-certified plastic surgeons were of significantly higher quality and showed lower bias than videos without these practitioners (P < 0.05).

Overall, YouTube videos showed high bias and low quality. Plastic surgeons should be aware of this popular resource and counsel patients about the bias that is often present. Plastic surgeons and academic plastic surgery organizations should strive to upload high-quality, unbiased videos to provide patients with a more appropriate resource.