YouTube™ as an Education Platform for Dental Implants

Aim: YouTube™, a video sharing platform, with its audiovisual content, can be an important education platform for dental students, practitioners and patients on all topics in the field of dentistry. The intention of this study is to analyze videos that is relevant dental implants on YouTube™ videos in terms of popularity, uploading source, video purpose and usefulness. Materials and Method: The keyword ‘dental implants’ was searched on YouTube. The top 100 results listed when sorted by relevance on YouTube™ were scanned for English videos that received comments. For all results, video features such as views, likes, duration (minutes), comments, viewing rate and usefulness score (between 0-2) were created. The first 76 videos that satisfied the inclusion criteria, ranked by relevance, were evaluated. The videos were categorized according to source and purpose and examined in terms of video features. Results: The usefulness score was significantly higher in healthcare professional source (p=0.039) according to company, individual user and tv channel sources. Healthcare professionals who inform their patients uploaded the majority of the videos (57%). Also, in another comparison in terms of video purpose, statistical data showed that videos with patient experience (p=0.019) received significantly more comments. Conclusion: YouTube™ could be preferred as an education platform for dental students, practioners and patient information about dental implants. It is obvious that if the videos uploaded by healthcare professionals are prepared to include patient experiences, they will inform the society more accurately about dental implants.