August 04, 2025 | Virtual Event
Selcan Ekicier Acar
Ankara Atatürk Sanatory Training and Research Hospital,, Turkey
Selcan Ekicier ACAR obtained a Medical Degree in 2012 from Hacettepe University and finished an ophthalmology residency at Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital. She is pursuing postdoctoral research in the Bioengineering Department at Hacettepe University. She is employed as an ophthalmologist with a specialized focus on ocular surface, cornea, cataract surgery, stem cells, and biomaterials.
Increasing the accessibility of internet resources YouTube has started to be used frequently for accessing medical information. The aim of this study is to evaluate the quality and reliability of videos about cataracts. In this study, Youtube search was performed using the keyword “Cataract”. The basic features of the videos, such as the number of days online, the video duration (minutes), video sources, number of views and number of likes were recorded. Evaluation of the videos was made with the benchmark criteria of DISCERN, Global Quality Scale (GQS) and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). A total of 100 videos were scanned and 79 videos matching the criteria were included in the study. When analyzed according to their sources, the groups were as follows: Doctors (n=26; 32.9%), health institutions (n=41; 51.8%), social media platforms containing health information (n=12; 15.1%).According to the quality classification, 58% of all videos were high quality, 32.1% medium quality, 7.4% low quality. As a source of medical information, Youtube is a risky platform to reach precise and accurate information. More than half of his videos are of high quality. However, patients should be careful when using Youtube as a source of information due to the presence of low quality videos and the lack of difference between their basic features.