YouTube as a source of patient information for stroke: A content-quality and an audience engagement analysis.

Background: Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide following ischemic heart disease, and the fifth in the United States. The video-sharing database, YouTube, is the second most popular visited website with more than 2 billion users, thus it's increasingly being used as a medium for delivering health information.

Aim: We aimed to evaluate the quality, reliability and audience engagement of stroke-related YouTube videos.

Methods: In October 2019 we conducted a search on YouTube using 5 keywords: stroke, brain attack, hemorrhagic stroke, ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack. We selected the first 30 videos from each search query for further analysis. The validated DISCERN instrument was used (a score of 0-5 per question) to assess the videos by four independent raters. We then recorded qualitative data and quantitative data for each video.

Results: After sorting through 150 stroke videos, a total of 101 unique YouTube videos met our inclusion criteria. We found that the mean overall quality of YouTube videos according to DISCERN is of fair quality. Most videos (65.3%) were uploaded by hospitals, mentioned the symptoms of stroke (66.3%), had a doctor speaking (60.4%) and contained diagrams (20.8%).

Conclusion: YouTube is a useful source of gathering information about treatment choices for patients and their families as the quality of YouTube videos is fair. The audience engagement suggestions in our paper may help content creators improve the appeal of YouTube videos.