Assessing the accuracy and usefulness of YouTube videos on small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) surgery for patients and healthcare professionals

To evaluate the quality, usefulness, and reliability of videos about Small Incision Lenticule Extraction (SMILE) surgery on the YouTube platform. On January 19, 2022, a search was performed on YouTube (www.youtube.com) with the keywords ‘small incision lenticule extraction’, ‘SMILE refractive surgery’, and ‘ReLex SMILE Surgery’. The default search option was “sort videos by relevance”. The duration of videos (seconds), the number of views, the source of videos (surgeons/medical organizations-health channels/patients-others), the number of subscribers, the number of likes and dislikes, like ratio (like × 100/[like + dislike]), the number of comments, the time since upload date (days), the video content (surgery/theoretical information), the content of surgical videos (real surgery/animation), mode of expression (verbal narration/subtitle), and the presence of a conflict of interest (yes/no) were recorded. The videos were blindly evaluated by two refractive surgeons (SA and AK) using DISCERN, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Global Quality Score (GQS). A total of 101 videos were analyzed, 38 (37.6%) of which were uploaded by surgeons. The mean DISCERN, JAMA, and GQS were 37.73 ± 7.49; 1.90 ± 0.57; and 2.20 ± 0.73, respectively. The JAMA score, GQS, and video duration were all significantly correlated with the DISCERN score. The GQS was significantly correlated with all parameters except the JAMA score. Overall, SMILE surgery videos on the YouTube platform may provide cursory information to non-ophthalmologists; however, when the videos are evaluated using tools such as DISCERN, JAMA, and GQS, they are of low quality in terms of refractive surgery education for ophthalmologists. Experts should evaluate and review content uploaded to websites such as YouTube.