Vascular surgery presence in carotid endarterectomy YouTube videos

YouTube videos have become a common resource for trainees to learn about surgical procedures. Carotid endarterectomy (CEA) is one example procedure that may be performed by multiple specialties and with a variety of techniques. Little is known about educational content and the representation of vascular surgeons in these videos. We sought to compare the educational quality of CEA YouTube videos, techniques demonstrated, and prevalence of each specialty.

YouTube was programmatically searched for the terms "carotid endarterectomy," "carotid endarterectomy surgery," "carotid endarterectomy technique," "carotid endarterectomy CEA," and "carotid artery surgery." Videos that met inclusion criteria were analyzed for surgical technique, procedural steps, surgeon specialty, video length, and date. Videos were determined to have high-quality educational content if the video included English-language captions or narration and demonstrated key steps of the procedure: division of the common facial vein; exposure of the common, external, and internal carotid arteries; vascular control and clamping; and arteriotomy, endarterectomy, and arteriotomy closure.

Forty-six videos met inclusion criteria. Vascular surgery was associated with 12 (26.1%) CEA videos, cardiac surgery with 13 (28.3%), and neurosurgery with 14 (30.4%). Surgeon specialty was unknown for seven (17.4%) videos. Eight videos were high quality, of which vascular surgery was associated with three (37.5%). Conventional endarterectomy was the most common technique demonstrated, whereas a total of seven videos demonstrated eversion technique. Vascular and cardiac surgeons were more likely to demonstrate patch angioplasty than neurosurgeons, who exclusively performed primary closure (P < .05). Compared with cardiac surgeons, vascular surgeon CEA videos had more views (25,956 ± 9613 vs 1200 ± 368; P < .05) and were more likely to be published by user accounts with an academic affiliation (11 vs 6; P < .05). Vascular surgery videos were older than videos by cardiac surgeons (6.0 ± 1.1 years vs 3.0 ± 0.5 years; P < .05) and neurosurgeons (6.0 ± 1.1 years vs 3.1 ± 0.8 years; P < .05).

Despite more views, the field of vascular surgery is under-represented in YouTube videos demonstrating CEA. Vascular surgery videos tend to be older and make up a minority of high-quality videos. As more learners turn to YouTube for information about surgical procedures, vascular surgeons should expand their online presence through the production and collection of high-quality videos for trainees.