The Reliability of Bariatric Surgery Videos in YouTube Platform

Background

The growing number of bariatric surgery videos shared on YouTube highlights the need for content and quality assessment. The aim of this study was to answer the question ‘Is watching these videos useful to surgeons and patients?’

Methods

YouTube was searched using the keywords ‘obesity surgery’, ‘bariatric surgery’ and ‘weight loss surgery’, and 100 videos retrieved using each keyword were classified based on their ‘usefulness score’ as very useful, useful and not useful. Video content; source; length and number of views, likes and dislikes were recorded. Upload sources included doctors or hospitals (DH), medical web sites or TV channels (MW), commercial web sites (CW) or civilians (CI). Between-group differences were compared.

Results

Of the 300 videos watched, 175 were included in the study; 53.7% were useful and 24.6% were very useful. There were no between-group differences in the number of likes (p = 0.480), dislikes (p = 0.592) and views (p = 0.104). Most videos were uploaded by MW and DH, also with no significant differences in the number of likes (p = 0.35), dislikes (p = 0.14) and views (p = 0.93). No videos were found with misleading information.

Conclusions

The popularity of bariatric surgery and interest of both patients and surgeons are increasing daily. Although videos on bariatric surgery on YouTube may be more useful than those on other surgical procedures, it is important that the videos are uploaded by medical professionals and that specific upload and retrieval filters are applied.