Mycetoma: A critical appraisal of educational content on YouTube.

Background: Mycetoma is a fungal neglected tropical disease. Accurate dissemination of information is critical in endemic areas. YouTube, a popular platform for health information, hosts numerous videos on mycetoma, but the quality and reliability of these videos remain largely unassessed.

Methods: We used modified DISCERN and Global Quality Score (GQS) for reliability and quality respectively. Video duration, views, likes, and comments were recorded. Spearman's rank correlation and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to identify correlations between metrices and quality scores.

Results: We included 73 mycetoma-related YouTube videos were analyzed, the median GQS score was 4.00 ((IQR = 3.33-4.00), indicating generally high-quality content, while the median mDISCERN score was 3.00 (IQR = 3.00-3.00) reflecting moderate reliability. Videos produced by professionals had significantly higher scores compared to those from consumer-generated content (p < 0.001). A significantly positive correlation was observed between video duration and both GQS (r = 0.417, p < 0.001) and mDISCERN (r = 0.343, p = 0.003). However, views, likes and comments did not significantly correlate with video quality. Additionally, videos longer in duration (p < 0.001) and older in upload date (p = 0.014) had higher quality scores.

Conclusions: The study shows that mycetoma-related videos on YouTube are generally of high quality, with moderate reliability. This emphasizes the need for expert involvement in content creation and efforts to improve health information online.