Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery in Times of Social Media: An Analysis of the Reach and Topic Focus of the Most Successful Channels on YouTube

Abstract

The use of social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram is becoming an integral part of communication in plastic and aesthetic surgery. The potential reach provides significant opportunities to share information and reach patients. It must therefore be increasingly considered as a modern tool for a new form of publication and as a data and knowledge bank. This work aims to investigate the leading YouTube channels of German plastic and aesthetic surgeons with a view to reach, characteristics and topic focus. All leading German YouTube channels of specialists in plastic and aesthetic surgery were evaluated. The analysis was based on key figures (country ranking, number of uploads, reach with total views, daily new subscribers; association with university hospital, non-university hospital, private practice) and content with a consecutive classification of the topics of the most successful videos. With the keyword "plastic surgery", 376 German channels were identified, with 8 channels meeting the inclusion criteria. The most successful channels reached a median of 1.342.017 views (IQR 745.455-2.550.682). The daily views on the channels amount to a median of 718 views per channel (IQR 272-1.086). From a total of 290 of the most successful videos, 87% were about aesthetic procedures (n=253). A percentage of 87.5% (7/8) of the most successful channels were from plastic and aesthetic surgeons in private practice. The platform YouTube offers an enormous potential of reach for knowledge transfer and marketing. It is primarily used by aesthetic surgeons and here mainly by those from the private practice sector. There is still a lot of potential for expansion regarding the representation of university plastic and aesthetic surgery with all its fields such as reconstruction, hand surgery and burn surgery on this platform.