Assessing the scientific quality and reliability of YouTube videos about chemotherapy

Abstract

No studies have evaluated the interaction, quality, and reliability of chemotherapy-related videos published on YouTube. The aim was to evaluate the content of YouTube videos about chemotherapy using 5 different scoring tools. In this cross-sectional register-based study, popular videos on YouTube about the following keywords were examined; "chemotherapy," "what is chemotherapy," "types of chemotherapy," "chemotherapy side effects" and "chemotherapy treatments." Quality and reliability of video content were measured using the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Global Quality Score (GQS), the Video Information Quality Index (VIQI), and Health on the Net code (HONcode) scores. A total of 108 videos were analyzed in the study. The median duration was 200 (30-2020) seconds and the median total number of views was 17500 (61-8615000). Among the video publishers, private hospitals were the most (n = 36, 33%). The most (n = 71, 66%) populer category of videos were patient education videos. Half (n = 55, 51%) of the narrators in the videos were only oncology professionals. Mean DISCERN, JAMA, GQS, VIQI, and HONcode scores were 2.73 ± 1.18, 1.97 ± 1.05, 2.94 ± 1.08, 14.03 ± 3.73, and 4.68 ± 2.46, respectively. A positive correlation was found between the 5 scoring points (P