Is YouTube an adequate source of oral hygiene education for orthodontic patients?

Introduction: The present study aims to assess the quality, reliability and content of the information provided by the YouTube videos on oral hygiene during orthodontic treatment, to reveal the efficacy of the videos for patients and to help dentists who use this platform as a source to guide their patients accurately.

Method: In the beginning, it was found that the most common search term on oral hygiene during orthodontic treatment in Google Trends was 'how to clean braces'. A total of 150 videos containing keywords were reviewed, and 56 videos were assessed within the scope of the study. Videos were analysed for reliability score, content analysis and GQS criteria.

Results: According to the results, the mean video length was statistically significantly greater in rich-content videos than in poor-content videos (p = 0.024). In addition, the reliability score of rich-content videos was statistically significantly higher than that of poor-content videos (p = 0.026). Likewise, the GQS of rich-content videos was statistically significantly higher than that of poor-content videos (p < 0.001). However, the number of views, the number of likes, the number of dislikes, the number of comments, the number of days since upload, the interaction index and the view rate did not statistically significantly differ by content categories (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: The present study concluded that the YouTube videos providing oral hygiene education for patients receiving or scheduled for orthodontic treatment had poor content and overall medium quality. The instantaneous data collection was one of the study's limitations.