Educational value of spinal injection therapy videos in Korean YouTube for back pain patients

BACKGROUND: YouTube, the largest online video platform, has become increasingly popular as a source of health information to patients. The aim of the study was to assess whether Korean patients were well informed about spinal injection from YouTube. METHODS: Search for the keyword “cheog-chu ju-sa” in Korean language was done, and the quality of the 51 videos with the highest number of views was evaluated independently by two pain management doctors. RESULTS: The averages of global quality scores evaluated by the two doctors were 3.0 and 3.5 and modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) scores were 2.8 and 3.0, respectively. The Kappa statistic between the two doctors’ scores was 0.285 and 0.417. CONCLUSIONS: The percentage of low-quality videos with a global quality score of 2 or less is 18–36%, which indicated that these videos might provide inaccurate or misleading medical information to the patient. Pain clinic doctors should be wary of medically misleading information available on online platforms, such as YouTube, and strive to create and distribute professional quality educational materials.