Quality analysis of YouTube videos about thyroid orbitopathy

To evaluate the quality and reliability of YouTube videos about Thyroid Orbitopathy.

A YouTube search was performed using the keyword 'Graves eye disease', 'thyroid eye disease', 'thyroid orbitopathy', 'thyroid ophtalmopathy' in the search bar of YouTube. The first 50 videos were analyzed for each keywords, and the first 100 videos that came out were included in the study. The numbers of views, likes, dislikes, comments, daily viewing rate (number of views per day), uploaded source, country of origin, video type (patient experience, scholarly information), and described treatment technique were evaluated for all videos. They were also evaluated regarding their DISCERN, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), global quality score (GQS) and usefulness score by two independent ophthalmologists.

Of the top 100 videos, 94 videos met the criteria. The mean DISCERN, JAMA, GQS and usefulness score were 55.27 ± 16.57, 3.04 ± 0.64, 3.44 ± 0.93 and 3.23 ± 1.1. If we look at the upload source 53 (56.4%) videos were uploaded by physicians, 30 (31.9%) videos by institutions/private health institutions, 7 (7.4%) videos by health channels, 4 (4.3%) videos by patients. All scoring systems showed a statistically significant and strong positive correlation with each other (p < 0.001). A statistically significant positive correlation between viewing rate, likes and comments was observed. As the duration of the video increased, a significant increase in the scores in other scores was observed.

We observed that the tests we used in the scoring were correlated with each other. Most of the thyroid orbitopathy videos on YouTube were of good quality. Ophthalmologists should guide their patients who want to get information on YouTube to watch videos uploaded by health care professionals.