#Orthopedicsurgery: Analyzing Orthopedic Surgical Content on TikTok

Introduction Social media continues to rise as an essential platform for the dissemination of information. TikTok has become increasingly relevant as a popular plaform. Content creators have begun to generate medical content relevant to healthcare professionals and patients. Currently, no studies have analyzed the content related to orthopedic surgery or weighed its impact in the context of biases. Methods Using the TikTok search tool, “#orthopedicsurgery” was queried. The first 100 videos that met inclusion criteria were classified by video and creator characteristic. Various engagement metrics, including video rank, likes, engagement score, view count, and like count, were examined. The DISCERN scoring system was employed by 3 independent viewers to evaluate bias, and inter-reviewer reliability was assessed. Data management and statistical analysis were conducted in MATLAB R2022a. Results The top 100 TikTok videos using the “#orthopedicsurgery” hashtag, posted between August 23, 2020 and August 26, 2022 were analyzed. The dataset included 100 videos with over 184.5 million views, 1.24 million likes, 148,181 comments, and 1,110 hashtags. Videos were categorized as entertainment, educational, procedural, or lifestyle, with an average video duration of 37.06 seconds. The most common video type was educational (n=42); procedural videos correlated to higher rank (B=-18.40 P=0.013) . Videos generated by orthopedic surgeon and non-orthopedic surgeon HCP groups were correlated with lower engagement scores overall (B=-0.043,P<0.001 and B=-0.049,P<0.001). Lower DISCERN scores, higher bias, were observed in all other creator types compared to videos by orthopedic surgeons. Conclusions The content analyzed in this study varies from procedural demonstrations to entertainment trends, but notably, videos generated by non-healthcare professionals received more engagement than those by healthcare professionals. Further, this study underscores the need for healthcare organizations and providers to establish guidelines for content in an evolving digital landscape. It highlights the potential for orthopedic surgeons to connect with younger audiences. Ultimately, the findings suggest an opportunity for a novel way to disseminate accurate, high-quality information and connect with patients.