online medical information
The Educational Quality of Aphthous Ulcer Content on YouTube Dorin Yakubov, D.D.S., M.B.S.; George F. Raymond, D.D.S.
ABSTRACT Background: YouTube is among the most popular internet entertainment sites, but it can function as well as an informational platform. There has never been a study of aphthous ulcer content on YouTube. Methods: We obtained the top 10 videos by view count and relevance for the terms “Canker Sore” and “Aphthous Ulcer” and evaluated utilizing the DISCERN criteria. Results: The videos received 9,830,678 combined views (396,211 average). The average DISCERN score was 2.17 overall and 2.83 for bias. Conclusion: While videos may provide useful information, the limited evidence for much of the content on YouTube makes the content unreliable at best. Aphthous ulcers, commonly known as canker sores, are common, round ulcerations of the oral mucosa that classically present as burning or stinging pain when eating or drinking. While aphthous ulcers may be attributed to a variety of etiologies, including trauma, hypersensitivity, vitamin deficiency, infection and auto-immune manifestations, the exact cause of the condition has never been defined.[1] Though the condition may be treated with topical anesthetics, vitamin supplementation, cautery, barrier protection, irritant avoidance, topical steroids, and in more severe cases, oral steroids,[1] treatment will most often depend upon the etiology of the ulcerations and, thus, patients should undergo formal evaluation for recurrent aphthous ulcers. Aphthous ulcers are most often benign in nature; however, the pain associated with them can be intense and may lead pa-
20 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2021 The New York State Dental Journal ●
tients to seek out any remedy that could alleviate their pain. In many cases, patients use online resources, including YouTube, to search for the cause of their aphthous ulcers and potential remedies. To date, there has never been a formal evaluation of the quality of content related to aphthous ulcers on YouTube. As such, we have evaluated the videos most likely to be viewed by patients searching YouTube to determine their utility, potential harm and common trends throughout the videos. Methods The assessment is based on methods previously described by Ward et al.[2-4] A YouTube search was performed on April 24, 2020, for the terms “Canker Sore” and “Aphthous Ulcer” on Incognito Mode. Videos were filtered for relevance and view count to obtain the top 10 video results for each search parameter. Sorting by views and relevance is tabulated by internal YouTube algorithms. Relevance is the default search parameter for users. Videos were categorized by author type: dentist, dental hygienist, medical physician, educational service, hospital, private practice group, company, advertiser, patient, pharmacist and unknown. The DISCERN criteria for assessing consumer health information was used by the first author to evaluate each video.[5] The DISCERN criteria was created to be a reliable and reproducible method for evaluating the quality of health-related content and treatment options, which was meant to be distributed to the general public. Its original inception was for evaluation of written materials through a questionnaire with minimal subjectivity, to help patient and health providers with consumer health information.[5] The DISCERN criteria was chosen as many of the attributes that contribute to high-quality print publications should also be present in educational videos. Each video is graded from 1 to 5, with 1 being the worst quality and 5 being the best quality. Bias is also graded from 1 to
