Assessment of YouTube Videos about Urethral Stricture and Its Management

Purpose To evaluate the reliability, transparency, usability and technical quality of videos about urethral stricture and its management in the most common video-sharing website YouTube. Methods We performed a video search on YouTube using the keywords Urethral Stricture, Internal Urethrotomy and Urethroplasty. After excluding the videos that did not meet the inclusion criteria, demographic data of each video was recorded and assessed with the validated DISCERN questionnaire, the Journal of the American Medical Association Benchmark Score (JAMAs) and the Global Quality Score (GQS). Additionally, the Urethral Stricture Video Score was developed by two experienced surgeons to assess the technical aspects. Videos were also compared with a view to their source of upload. Results A total of 177 videos were analysed. Videos from University and Other had a significantly higher view ratio and video power index (VPI) than the rest (all p<0.05). For all mentioned scores, even though the video sources of Society and University had significantly higher scores than the rest (all p<0.05), all scores remained at a low to moderate level at each group. Conclusion Even though universities, societies and organisations tend to upload better videos about the management of urethral stricture in terms of general quality, reliability, transparency and technical aspects, the online visual content about urethral stricture and its management needs to be improved in order to provide more reliable and qualified information for both clinicians and patients.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the reliability and quality of YouTube videos about urethral stricture and its management. It found that although videos from universities, societies, and organizations tended to have higher quality, the overall quality remained low.