Quality of bladder cancer information on YouTube

YouTube is one of the social networks most widely used as a source of information. However, there are doubts about the scientific quality of the information available. This study aims to characterise this by analysing videos about bladder cancer posted on YouTube.

This was a cross-sectional descriptive study of the first 50 Spanish-language videos published on YouTube, leaving 38 for analysis. The videos were evaluated by three urologists using two validated questionnaires: Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) and DISCERN (quality criteria for consumer health information), classifying them according to the score of the latter, in poor quality (1-2 points) and moderate/good quality (3-5 points).

The median PEMAT score was 71.6% (16-5-100%) for understanding and 35.5% (0-100%) for action. According to DISCERN, 26 videos (66.7%) were of poor quality and 12 (30.8%) of moderate/good quality. We found significant differences in terms of PEMAT of understanding (p = 0.004) and action (p = 0.000). In total, 90.9% of those involving medical staff were of low quality, which is paradoxical, but statistically significant (p = 0.01). Furthermore, 52.4% of those describing relevant information were of moderate/good quality, and 94.1% of those not describing relevant information were of poor quality (p = 0.02).

More than 60% of the videos published on YouTube about bladder cancer in Spanish are of low quality. This represents an important risk of misinformation for the general public to whom most of them are addressed.