Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most frequent movement disorder. Patients access YouTube, one of the largest video databases in the world, to retrieve health-related information increasingly often.
Objective: We aimed to identify high-quality publishers, so-called "channels" that can be recommended to patients. We hypothesized that the number of views and the number of uploaded videos were indicators for the quality of the information given by a video on PD.
Methods: YouTube was searched for 8 combinations of search terms that included "Parkinson" in German. For each term, the first 100 search results were analyzed for source, date of upload, number of views, numbers of likes and dislikes, and comments. The view ratio (views / day) and the likes ratio (likes * 100 / [likes + dislikes]) were determined to calculate the video popularity index (VPI). The global quality score (GQS) and title - content consistency index (TCCI) were assessed in a subset of videos.
Results: Of 800 search results, 251 videos met the inclusion criteria. The number of views or the publisher category were not indicative of higher quality video content. The number of videos uploaded by a channel was the best indicator for the quality of video content.
Conclusion: The quality of YouTube videos relevant for PD patients is increased in channels with a high number of videos on the topic. We identified three German channels that can be recommended to PD patients who prefer video over written content.
Keywords: Chronic disease; health information; information retrieval; movement disorder; neurology; social media; video database.