Quality and reliability of Chinese short videos on TikTok related to chronic renal failure: cross-sectional study

After searching and screening, a total of 78 eligible videos were ultimately included for analysis. According to their sources, 94.87% were uploaded by medical professionals. The median DISCERN and GQS scores were 39 (IQR 37-46.25) and 3 (IQR 2.75-4), respectively, indicating that videos related to chronic renal failure on TikTok were unreliable and of mediocre quality, mainly at poor (42.31%) and moderate (44.87%) categories. The reliability and quality of the videos were positively correlated with video duration (<i>r</i> = 0.384, <i>p</i> = 0.001; <i>r</i> = 0.469, <i>p</i> < 0.01) and showed no statistically significant correlation with popularity or number of followers. Consequently, due to their unreliability and low quality, these Chinese videos related to chronic renal failure on TikTok cannot provide patients with accurate assessments and are unsuitable as a source of medical knowledge.