JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Skin cancer patients increasingly watch videos to acquire disease-related information. Until now, no scientific evaluation of the quality of videos available for German-speaking basal cell carcinoma patients has been performed.

Objective:

We aimed to identify and evaluate videos on basal cell carcinoma provided on YouTube.

Methods:

The first three pages on YouTube were searched for the German keywords “basal cell carcinoma” in July 2020. Two authors evaluated videos that met the predefined eligibility criteria. The quality of the information of the videos was evaluated using DISCERN and the Global Quality Scale (GQS). The understandability and actionability were assessed with the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT). The reliability was assessed with the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) score. Subgroup differences were identified by the Kruskal-Wallis test.

Results:

Forty-one videos were included in the evaluation. The average assessment scores, mean (SD), were as follows: DISCERN, 3.3 (0.80); GQS, 3.8 (1.1); JAMA, 27.74% (22.1%); understandability, 70.8% (13.3%), and actionability, 45.9% (43.7%); indicating medium to good quality and understandability, low actionability and poor reliability. The quality of videos provided by health professionals was significantly higher than that provided by laypersons.

Conclusions:

Optimization of the videos is desirable. In particular, adaptation to reliability criteria is necessary to support patient education and increase transparency.