YouTube as a source of information on gonadotropin self-injections

• Published in: European journal of obstetrics & gynecology and reproductive biology 2021-09, Vol.264, p.135-140
• Main Authors: Çintesun, Feyza Nur İncesu, Çintesun, Ersin, Seçilmiş, Özlem
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Gonadotropin; Infertility; Internet; Patient education; YouTube
• ISSN: 0301-2115; 1872-7654
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ejogrb.2021.07.015

•The internet and social media have become important health information providers.•Patients should be given special training about gonadotropin self-injections.•The face-to-face communication is the gold-standard method for training the patients.•If this is not possible, it can be considered to direct the patients to online sources.•There are several useful videos on Youtube regarding gonadotropin self-injections. To investigate the comprehensiveness, quality, and reliability of YouTube videos that target teaching patients gonadotropin self-injections. Videos demonstrating gonadotropin self-injections were searched using the keywords “Gonal-f injection,” “Puregon injection,” “Menapur injection,” “Merional injection,” “Fostimon injection,” and “Menagon injection,” on December 20th, 2020. The videos were divided into two categories as including “useful information” and “misleading information” by two physicians. A 5-point global quality scale (GQS) and 5-point modified DISCERN scale were used for the assessments of quality and reliability, respectively. Among 110 videos, 90 (81.8%) were found to include useful information and 20 (18.2%) were found to give misleading information. The kappa statistic for inter-observer agreement was 0.817 (p  0.05). On the other hand, mean reliability, GQS, and comprehensiveness scores were higher in the useful information group than in the other group. As the subgroup analysis was performed by source, patient opinion videos had lower reliability, comprehensiveness, and GQS scores than videos created by other sources (p