Resident Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Florida, United States
Introduction: Robotic surgical systems have been developed to improve spine surgery accuracy. Studies have found significant reductions in screw revision rates and radiation exposure with robotic assistance compared with open surgery. YouTube is the largest online video platform used worldwide and patients and caregivers are turning to YouTube for medical education, and for information regarding their upcoming procedure and watch videos that claim to explain risk factors, complications and alternatives. Therefore, there is a need for the continuous critical assessment of healthcare-related YouTube videos. The objective of our study is to assess the accuracy and reliability of YouTube videos on robotic spine surgery for patients’ education.
Methods: In April of 2022, YouTube was queried for the following keywords: “Robotic Spine Surgery”. The “Relevance-Based Ranking” filter was applied, and the first 3 result pages were taken into consideration. Videos had to be uploaded by a university or hospital and be in the English language. Three independent healthcare personnel (a medical student, neurosurgery resident and neurosurgeon) evaluated the videos’ education quality and informational material using the validated DISCERN tool.
Results: Our study found that 33% of the 33 videos analyzed scored above a 3 on the DISCERN scoring scale (considered a ‘‘good” video), with overall mean DISCERN score of 2.8 ± 1.3. The duration of videos was significantly different between the two groups (Good=16 min vs Unhelpful=4 min, p=0.01). Similar to previously published studies, we found that views, likes, and dislikes (average and per day) and days since upload were not significant predictors of quality of the videos (Table1). Example videos from each DISCERN category are shown in Table2.
Conclusion : Our study shows that YouTube videos on robotic spine surgery lack accuracy and have overall poor educational value. We believe that there should be increased institutional oversight to combat the spread of medical misinformation.
