YouTube as a Source of Information for Gallstone Disease

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to assess the Internet site YouTube as a source of information for gallstone disease. Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month. Methods: The Internet website YouTube was searched using keyword ‘gallstones' which yielded a total of 1620 results. First 15 pages were screened (20 videos/page) and any video containing the word ‘gallstone' in the title was included in the study. Only videos in English were included. Two physician viewers watched each video and classified them as useful, misleading, or irrelevant. Sources of the videos were classified as health agencies, independent sources, and medical advertisements. The kappa statistic was used to measure inter-observer variability. Total viewership, duration, days since upload, source, and information content were noted. Data analysis was done using SPSS software. Independent two-tailed t-test was done to compare the means of continuous variables. A p value of less than .05 was considered significant. Results: A total of 228 videos out of the 300 videos screened had the word ‘gallstones' in the title. Out of the 228 videos, 121 (53%) were considered useful, 66 (28.9%) were considered misleading and 41 (17.9%) were considered irrelevant (if the spoken language was not English or duration of video was less than 1 min). Viewership/day was used for estimating the popularity of the videos. Notably, viewership/day for misleading videos was significantly higher (p value = 0.03) than useful videos with mean being 18.2 views/day vs 14 views/day, respectively. Seventy percent of the videos were from independent sources, 20.3% were from health agencies, and 9.6% videos were medical advertisements. Most of the misleading videos endorsed different kinds of natural therapies for treatment of symptomatic gallstones; the most common natural therapy advocated being ‘liver flushes' but also yoga, cryptomonadales, and barley therapy, among others. Significantly only three of the useful videos (all three from independent sources) refuted natural therapies as a treatment for symptomatic gallstone disease and explained logically why flush therapies do not work and may even be harmful. Conclusion: About 50 million Americans obtain health-related information on the Internet monthly. Websites like Google and YouTube are extremely popular sources of health information much more than websites like UpToDate, etc. YouTube has a substantial amount of information on gallstones, of variable quality, with wide viewership and the potential to influence the general public's opinions on both for and against the right choice. Hence physicians and health organizations should use sources like YouTube for dissemination of reliable information as well as advise against potentially harmful therapies.