YouTube As Source Of Prostate Cancer Information

Main Category: Prostate / Prostate Cancer
Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 06 Dec 2009 - 0:00 PST

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UroToday.com - Half of patients faced with a decision related to prostate cancer (CaP) will use the Internet for information. YouTube is a popular Internet video site with over 100 million viewers daily. Sources and quality of data on sites like YouTube are not disclosed. In the online edition of Urology, Dr. Peter Steinberg and colleagues assessed the accuracy, quality and bias of English language CaP related videos that appear on YouTube.

The authors searched YouTube for videos on PSA testing, radiotherapy, and surgical therapy for CaP. Videos were abstracted if they were ten minutes or less in length and not patient testimonials. Two urology residents analyzed each video's informational and scientific content, rating it as excellent, fair or poor. Bias was graded as for, against, or neutral. Disagreements were arbitrated by a third, more senior urology resident. Criteria were applied as definitions for each of the rating scores. Inter observer agreement was calculated as a kappa score.

A total of 228 videos were found. Of those, 26 on PSA testing, 28 on radiotherapy, and 123 on surgery were excluded primarily due to content unrelated to CaP. This left 14 videos on PSA, 5 on radiotherapy and 32 on surgery for analysis. The need for the senior resident to arbitrate was relatively common. Information content was rated as fair or poor in 73% of all videos and the interobserver agreement was well above that expected by chance alone. Regarding bias, 69% of videos were rated as having bias for surgery, radiotherapy, or PSA testing. No video was biased against treatment or PSA testing. The length of surgery and PSA testing videos correlated with the content. Video length was associated with a bias favoring surgery. The authors conclude that YouTube is not a reliable source of CaP information.

Steinberg PL, Wason S, Stern JM, Deters L, Kowal B, Seigne J

Urology. 2009 Oct 6. (Epub ahead of print)
doi:10.1016/j.urology.2008.07.059

Written by UroToday.com Contributing Editor Christopher P. Evans, MD, FACS

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