Background/Purpose: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic potentially disabling disease affecting about 1.3 million people in the U.S. and as much as 1% of the worldwide population. Patient education plays a paramount role in rheumatoid arthritis management. Patients use the internet, and particularly social media, to learn about their medical condition. Youtube is the second largest search engine after Google and the most visited social media site with more than two billion views every day. In our study, we aim to evaluate the quality of material available for rheumatoid arthritis patients on Youtube.

Methods: Youtube.com main page was queried for the search term “Rheumatoid Arthritis.” The resulting videos were evaluated for content, duration, source, and audience interaction: number of views, likes, and dislikes. Content was classified as useful, misleading or patient’s views/experience. Useful videos were further analyzed for content using the published DISCERN instrument with 16 questions each consists of 5-point scale for assessing the quality of health information.

Results: The search term “rheumatoid arthritis” retrieved about 160.000 videos sorted by default filter of “relevance.” The top 20 videos were analyzed as these are the videos that patients were likely to view by visitor statistics. On average, videos had 15:52 minute duration, 76005 views, 639 likes, and 23 dislikes. 40% of videos were from non-professional educational groups, 30% from individuals/patients, 20% from health care professionals, 5% from news agencies, and 5% from health care organizations. 50% of the videos were classified as useful, 30% were patient views/experience, and 20% were misleading. Useful videos scored an average of 3.1 out of 5 on the DISCERN scale indicating fair quality. 60% of the useful videos were from non-professional educational groups with average DISCERN score of 3.5 out of 5. 20% were from health care professionals with average score of 2.5 out of 5. 10% were from individual/patient experience with a score of 2 out of 5. 10 % were from news agency reports with a score of 3 out of 5.

Conclusion: Despite being the most visited social media site and the second largest search engine, Youtube lacks high quality education materials for patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Majority of videos were from non-professional educational groups with fair quality. Healthcare organizations and professionals contributed to only 20% of Youtube videos on rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatologists and professional healthcare organizations are encouraged to engage in patient education using Youtube given the high utilization frequency of this site by patients, but the quality of education must be stringently overseen, and misleading views have to be corrected.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/youtube-videos-on-rheumatoid-arthritis-a-qualitative-analysis-of-views-and-content/