Background: YouTube is overloaded with various medical videos and has become a common source for surgeons and the general public alike to update on surgical procedures. This study determined the quality and benefits of information with regards to laparoscopic pyloromyotomy on YouTube.
Methods: A search was performed on YouTube using the key words "laparoscopic pyloromyotomy." All of the videos were viewed and evaluated by 2 surgeons watching the first 20 seconds and selected segments of each video to determine the content of the videos. The exclusion criteria were videos not related to laparoscopic pyloromyotomy, Microsoft-PowerPoint slide presentations and repeated videos.
Results: The search revealed 471 videos and video playlists, and of the 350 watched videos only 34 were on the topic of laparoscopic pyloromyotomy. Eight videos had an institutional source and 26 were private uploads. Among the analyzed videos, 11 were in high-definition (HD) and 23 non-HD. Regarding the country of origin, most of them were from India (N.=6) and the USA (N.=6), and regarding language, English was most common 28. The videos were uploaded between the years 2007-2016.The number of views ranged from 21 to 14,783 and mean duration of the videos was 2.55 min. There was a noticeable paucity of information as the largest number of videos offered a brief text description below only.
Conclusions: Social media exposure of laparoscopic pyloromyotomy on YouTube can be summarized as follows: one-quarter of the videos are institutional uploads, English language videos top the list, mean video durations are 2.5 minutes with an average number of views >2500 and the majority of surgery videos focus on the main part of the procedure.