Bruxism treatment on Youtube: evaluating reliability and information accuracy

Abstract Background The aim of this study was to evaluate the content and quality of videos about bruxism treatments on YouTube, a platform frequently used by patients today to obtain information. Methods A YouTube search was performed using the keywords “bruxism treatment” and “teeth grinding treatment”. “The sort by relevance” filter was used for both search terms and the first 150 videos were saved. A total of 139 videos that met the study criteria were included in the study. Videos were classified as poor, moderate or excellent based on a usefulness score that evaluated content quality. The modified DISCERN tool was also used to evaluate video quality. Additionally, videos were categorized according to the upload source, target audience and video type. The types of treatments mentioned in the videos and the demographic data of the videos were recorded. Results According to the usefulness score, 59% of the videos were poor-quality, 36.7% were moderate-quality and 4.3% were excellent-quality. Moderate-quality videos had a higher interaction index than excellent-quality videos ( p = 0.039). The video duration of excellent-quality videos was longer than that of moderate and poor-quality videos ( p = 0.024, p = 0.002). Videos with poor-quality content were found to have significantly lower DISCERN scores than videos with moderate ( p < 0.001) and excellent-quality content ( p = 0.008). Additionally, there was a significantly positive and moderate ( r = 0.446) relationship between DISCERN scores and content usefulness scores ( p < 0.001). There was only a weak positive correlation between DISCERN scores and video length ( r = 0.359; p < 0.001). The videos uploaded by physiotherapists had significantly higher views per day and viewing rate than videos uploaded by medical doctors ( p = 0.037), university-hospital-institute ( p = 0.024) and dentists ( p = 0.006). The videos uploaded by physiotherapists had notably higher number of likes and number of comments than videos uploaded by medical doctors ( p = 0.023; p = 0.009, respectively), university-hospital-institute ( p = 0.003; p = 0.008, respectively) and dentists ( p = 0.002; p = 0.002, respectively). Conclusions Although the majority of videos on YouTube about bruxism treatments are produced by professionals, most of the videos contain limited information, which may lead patients to debate treatment methods. Health professionals should warn patients against this potentially misleading content and direct them to reliable sources.