Aerosol Management in Dentistry During the COVID-19 on YouTube

Abstract

Aim: The novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world despite all efforts. Dental professionals and staff are exposed to high infection risks and have the potential to spread these infections. Web-based portals are widely used in dentistry for obtaining information. YouTube is one of the most popular web platforms provides a wide variety of information, however, concerns are raised regarding the quality of the videos. The purpose of this study is to analyze the content of YouTube videos on aerosol management in dentistry during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 Materials and Methods: YouTube search was performed using the terms “dental aerosol management and COVID-19”, “dental aerosol control and COVID-19” and “dental aerosol reduction and COVID-19” with the default filter set to ‘‘sort by relevance’’. The first 100 videos for each term were viewed and analyzed by 2 independent research. The Global Quality Scale (GQS) and the video information and quality index (VIQI) INDEX were performed to evaluate video quality. Viewers’ interactions and Viewing Rate index were chosen to evaluate the video popularity and also other parameters (number of views, duration, time since upload, and likes and dislikes, country of origin, source of upload) were evaluated. 
 Results: After the exclusion criteria 57 videos were evaluated. 11 of the 57 videos had excellent quality and flow. It was observed that as the duration increased, the quality of the videos in both evaluation indexes (VIQI-GQS) were increased. There was no significant difference in terms of loading sources for VIQI and GQS index.
 Discussion and Conclusions: Besides high-quality videos on aerosol management, there were some low-quality videos that may cause spread of misleading information. Healthcare professionals should play a more active role in the educational videos about infection prevention and aerosol management during pandemic on YouTube.