Quality of YouTube Videos on Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy for Patient Education

Background: Surgical patients frequently seek information from digital sources, particularly before common operations such as laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC). YouTube provides a large amount of free educational content; however, it lacks regulation or peer review. To inform patient education, we evaluated the quality of YouTube videos on LC.

Methods: We searched YouTube with the phrase "laparoscopic cholecystectomy." Two authors independently rated quality of the first 50 videos retrieved using the JAMA, Health on the Net (HON), and DISCERN scoring systems. Data collected for each video included total views, time since upload, video length, total comments, and percentage positivity (proportion of likes relative to total likes plus dislikes). Interobserver reliability was assessed using an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Association between quality and video characteristics was tested.

Results: Mean video quality scores were poor, scoring 1.9/4 for JAMA, 2.0/5.0 for DISCERN, and 4.9/8.0 for HON. There was good interobserver reliability with an ICC of 0.78, 0.81, and 0.74, respectively. Median number of views was 21,789 (IQR 3000-61,690). Videos were mostly published by private corporations. No video characteristic demonstrated significant association with video quality.

Conclusion: YouTube videos for LC are of low quality and insufficient for patient education. Treating surgeons should advise of the website's limitations and direct patients to trusted sources of information.