Quality of Information on Erectile Dysfunction Videos on YouTube: A Descriptive Study

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is one of the most prevalent urological diseases, but there is limited data about the quality of its information in social networks. The aim of our study was to assess the quality of ED information contained in YouTube videos.
Descriptive study of the first 50 Spanish-language videos, published on YouTube, evaluated by three urologists. We used two validated questionnaires: PEMAT (Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool) and DISCERN. Videos were classified according to DISCERN score into poor or moderate-good quality.
The median time duration was 2.42minutes (0.15-3.58), 94,197 views (2,313-3,027,890), 682.5 «likes» (0-54,020) and 39 «dislikes» (0-2843). The median of PEMAT score was 29% (9%-95.5%) in understandability and 29% (0-95.5%) in actionability. According to DISCERN score 27 videos (57.4%) had poor quality and 20 (42.6%) moderate-good quality. There were no significant differences between the two groups in time duration, views, «likes» or «dislikes». There were differences in PEMAT score in understandability and actionability. The 86.7% of the moderate-good quality videos were starred by health care provider (P=.001). Also, the 85.7% of videos that describes treatment had moderate-good quality (P=.001). The 84% of the non-medical videos had a poor quality (P=.001).
Most ED videos on YouTube have poor quality. The highest quality videos are those made by professionals, although they are not the most viewed. It would be important to develop measures to prevent the spread of misinformation among social network users.
Copyright © 2023 Spanish Association of Andrology, Sexual and Reproductive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Spain, SLU All rights reserved.