Background: The aim of this study was to measure the quality of information about "flatfoot" and "pes planus" presented online on the social media site YouTube and to determine the trends of viewers to medical information on YouTube.
Methods: "Flatfoot and pes planus" was typed into the YouTube search module. From the search results, videos with 50,000 views or more, longer than 45 seconds, and containing information about flatfoot and pes planus disease were selected. DISCERN and JAMA scoring, daily average views, number of likes, and number of comments were collected from 53 videos that met the criteria. The profession of the sharer was evaluated in terms of the information quality of the sharing and the orientation of the audience.
Results: The mean number of views per day of the examined videos was 2,047. The mean video presentation time was 8 minutes 50 seconds. The mean JAMA score was 2 of 4 and the mean DISCERN score was 38.16 of 75. According to the DISCERN score according to the professions, the video quality was moderate for doctors (41.44 ± 12.99), moderate for physiotherapists (41.91 ± 9.04), poor for coaches (32.78 ± 7.87), poor for patients (34.50 ± 5.32), and weak for others (34.89 ± 14.00). According to the Spearman correlation between DISCERN score and mean daily viewing, significant relationships were found for the doctors (P = .0102) and others groups (P = .0033); however, no significant relationships were observed for the physiotherapists group (P = .1073), the flatfoot patients group (P = .5363), and the coaches group (P = .9111). There were significant relationships between like and comment counts in all groups (doctors, P = .0088; coaches, P = .0069; physiotherapists, P = .0007; others, P =.0018; and patients, P = .0066).
Conclusions: Looking at previous studies, it was observed that the quality of online health information was historically inadequate. Likewise, in our study on YouTube, we found that the quality of flatfoot and pes planus information was poor to moderate.