The Reliability of YouTube as an Information Resource for Parents About Retinopathy of Prematurity

To investigate the quality and reliability of YouTube videos about retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) to direct parents of infants with the disease to access more accurate content.

The term "retinopathy of prematurity" has been searched on YouTube containing all of the videos between January 2 and February 2, 2024. The first 200 videos were evaluated by two ophthalmologists. Duplicated-split videos, videos shorter than 60 seconds, videos presented in languages other than English or with an incomprehensible accent, and videos unrelated to ROP were excluded. Video uploaders, types, continental origins, durations, and viewer interactions were noted. DISCERN, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Global Quality Score (GQS) scoring systems were used to evaluate the quality of the videos.

The mean quality of all videos was poor in all scoring systems. Academic societies and medical institutes scored highest in video uploaders, followed by physicians; patient experience videos had the lowest quality. Of the video types, the medical education seminars were of the highest quality. Although a strong positive correlation was detected between video duration and video quality, this same strong correlation was not observed between viewer interactions and video quality. There was no significant difference between video origins in terms of video quality.

It would be wiser to direct the parents of patients with ROP to watch longer videos uploaded by the academic community, medical institute, or physicians, and to watch the medical training seminars. Also, it might be important to warn them not to take user interactions too seriously. [.