YouTube videos about facial plastic surgery get hundreds of millions of views — but often present inaccurate medical information, according to a new study.
Viewers often receive biased information, unbalanced assessments of a procedure’s risks and benefits, and narrators with unclear qualifications, study authors report in JAMA Facial and Plastic Surgery.
“When I talk to my patients about (nose surgery), for example, they’ll tell me what they know based on online videos, and often that’s not really what I’m doing for a procedure,” said senior author Dr. Boris Paskhover of Rutgers. New Jersey Medical School in Newark, in a telephone interview.
“The information is not patient-specific and does not focus on the risks of a procedure,” he said. “Many videos only focus on what the nose will look like and are often superficial.”
Paskhover and colleagues evaluated the top 240 videos related to facial plastic surgery on YouTube, including blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), dermal fillers, facial fillers, otoplasty (ear surgery), wrinkleectomy (facelift) , lip augmentation, lip fillers and rhinoplasty (nose surgery). For each video, researchers determined the narrators’ certification status using the American Board of Medical Specialties database. They classified the videos as created by a healthcare professional, a patient, or a third party.
They also evaluated each video using the DISCERN criteria, which rate consumer health information based on whether it is clear, relevant, sourced, balanced, unbiased, describes risks and benefits, explains areas of uncertainty, and provides additional sources of information. On a scale of 1-5, low scores indicate poor overall video quality. Overall, the videos had an average rating of 2.21.
Among the videos, the research team found that the term “nose effect” received the most views with more than 56 million views for the top 10 videos and an average of 2.8 million views per video. Nose surgery videos had an overall DISCERN rank of 2.1.
Blepharoplasty or blepharoplasty videos had the highest quality score at 2.75, followed by the search term “facelift,” with a score of 2.4.
“I tell my patients that 50 percent of what’s online — YouTube or otherwise — is wrong and 49 percent is right, but completely irrelevant to your particular situation,” Dr. Philip Miller of Gotham Plastic Surgery told the New York. Miller, who was not involved in this study, creates online videos for patients, but also recommends talking to a doctor about the specifics of a procedure.
“By all means, educate yourself, but what’s on your screen shouldn’t take over the power of authority,” he told Reuters Health by phone. “When the time comes, have a great relationship with your doctor and let your doctor guide your care.”
Patients should also be aware of the weaknesses of videos in other medical specialties. In a 2017 study, researchers found that YouTube videos about brachytherapy, a radiation oncology procedure used to treat cancer, often had a strong commercial bias.
“As with many procedures in medicine, sometimes it’s easier to watch a video of how the procedure is performed rather than read a pamphlet or consent form,” said Dr. Arpan Prabhu of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania. . Prabhu, who was not involved in this study, was the lead author on the brachytherapy study.
“There is a significant need for quality videos to be created and uploaded,” he told Reuters Health by email. “We hope to be part of the solution in the future.”
In the facial plastic surgery study, researchers saw a difference between the results of videos with medical professionals versus those without.
Overall, however, most videos did not include information verified by medical professionals.
“Online health-related information is largely uncontrolled and consumers should bear this in mind and think about the source of the material they view or read,” said Dr Trevor Kwok from the University of New South Wales. in Sydney. Australia.
Kwok, who was not involved in this study, evaluated YouTube videos about varicose vein treatments.
“This is no longer an ’emerging’ issue as the web and social media are already so ingrained in everyday life,” Kwok said via email. “But our understanding of exactly how this affects health care consumers is lagging.”
