Assessment of Stress Urinary Incontinence-Related Podcasts on Stitcher

To assess the quality, understandability, actionability, accuracy and commercial bias of podcasts regarding stress urinary incontinence (SUI).

The first 100 Stitcher podcasts from the search, "Stress urinary incontinence" were evaluated using the validated DISCERN criteria, PEMAT tool, and a Misinformation Likert Scale. The accuracy of information was assessed by comparison to the American Urological Association (AUA) SUI Guidelines.

Common publisher types included health/wellness channels (66%). Low-moderate quality, poor understandability and misinformation was seen in 67% (DISCERN ≤3), 69% (PEMAT understandability ≤75%) and 17% of podcasts, respectively. Treatments discussed included pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) (89%) and surgery (47%). Health and wellness channels had the most evidence of commercial bias (44%). Podcasts that discussed surgery more often emphasized shared decision-making (DISCERN15).

SUI-related podcasts on Stitcher are mostly published by health/wellness channels and skewed toward discussing PFMT. Podcasts are often low-moderate quality, poorly understandable and often have commercial bias.