Assessment of the Quality and Reliability of Social Media Videos for Patient Information on Common General Surgical Procedures

Introduction Social media is a significant platform for health information. However, the quality and reliability of patient facing surgical content is uncertain. We evaluated the quality and reliability of TikTok and Instagram videos about three common general surgical procedures: laparoscopic appendicectomy; laparoscopic cholecystectomy; and inguinal hernia repair, and compared performance by platform, procedure, and creator type. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study of the top fifty results per procedure per platform. Videos were classified as useful, misleading, personal experience, or irrelevant and quality and reliability assessed with the Global Quality Score (GQS) and modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) score respectively. Results 300 videos, accruing 592,975 likes and 11,489 comments, were analysed. Videos were low in both quality and reliability across both platforms although higher on Instagram (GQS 1.95; mDISCERN 1.65) than TikTok (GQS 1.27; mDISCERN 0.33; both P < .0001). 53/300 (17.7%) videos were judged to be misleading. Useful content was less frequent on TikTok than Instagram (14/150, 9.3% vs 82/150, 54.7%; P < .0001). Professional content was deemed more useful than that of non professionals (54/117, 46.2% vs 42/183, 23.0%; P < .0001) with higher quality and reliability scores (GQS 1.80 vs 1.49; mDISCERN 1.36 vs 0.76; both P < .0001). Conclusions Surgical educational videos across popular social media platforms are low in quality and reliability. Patients should be wary of the risk of possible health misinformation. Clinicians and professional bodies should be aware of the growing popularity of social media and consider the production of evidence-based content on these platforms to disseminate credible information and counter misinformation.