Quality Assessment of YouTube Videos As Information Source for Breast Self-Examination

Introduction Breast self-examination (BSE) is essential for early detection of breast cancer to lower the disease's morbidity and death rate. Education about the proper application reinforces its effectiveness. YouTube is an emerging modality for education distribution. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the quality and reliability of BSE videos on YouTube. Materials and methods A web search of YouTube was conducted using the term "breast self-examination". The first 50 relevant videos found through this search were compiled and evaluated. Video reliability was evaluated by applying benchmark criteria from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The educational quality of the videos was evaluated using the Global Quality Score (GQS) and the guidelines' comprehensiveness score for BSE-specific instructions. Results The mean number of views was 311,625.9. Medical sources were the most common upload sources, which were found in 60% of the analyzed videos (30 videos), while examination demonstration was the most common type of video content (33 videos, 66%), followed by examination information (15 videos, 30%). However, a significant association was found between videos containing both examination information and demonstration and better educational quality. Regarding video reliability, 34% of videos (17 videos) scored 0, and only 2% (one video) scored four. According to the GQS, only 8% (four videos) were of excellent quality, while the majority (20 videos, 40%) were of suboptimal quality. Based on the BSE comprehensiveness score, the mean score was seven out of nine. Conclusions Videos containing examination information and demonstrations showed the best educational quality. Although most of the YouTube videos of BSE showed a high comprehensiveness score for BSE-specific instructions, their JAMA reliability and GQS scores were poor.