EVALUATING THE QUALITY OF OVERACTIVE BLADDER PATIENT EDUCATION MATERIAL ON YOUTUBE USING THE PATIENT EDUCATION MATERIALS ASSESSMENT TOOL

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Overactive bladder (OAB) and its treatment options can often be confusing for patients. Increasingly patients with OAB turn to the internet for education material. With around 29 billion visits per month YouTube is the most popular online video streaming platform, and the second most visited website on the internet. We sought to evaluate the characteristics and quality of available patient education content for OAB on YouTube. METHODS: We searched YouTube on September 10th 2019 and selected the top 25 search results for “overactive bladder” for review. We also reviewed 3 Urology Care Foundation (UCF) OAB education videos available on YouTube for comparison. All videos were reviewed and scored using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) for Audiovisual (AV) materials. The PEMAT score is subdivided into understandability and actionability domains with a maximum score of 100% for each domain. RESULTS: The mean age of the reviewed videos was 64 (range 5-112) months, the mean length was 9.5 (0.9- 34) minutes, and the mean number of views was 151,382 (127 – 2,032,441). Of the top 25 search results, the mean PEMAT understandability score was 74% ±16% (range 41%- 100%). The mean PEMAT actionability score of reviewed videos was 57% ±39% (range 0%-100%). 72% of the reviewed videos featured a physician (not necessarily urologists), 8% a physical therapist, 20% other. For example, the most viewed video featured a cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Oz. In comparison, the 3 UCF videos had an average of 5,840 views, 3 minutes length, and higher PEMAT understandability and actionability scores of 93% and 100%. 100% of the UCF OAB videos featured an urologist. CONCLUSIONS: As anticipated, the quality of patient education material for OAB on YouTube varies significantly in both understandability and actionability. Many of the reviewed videos had poor actionability scores on PEMAT. Although the Urology Care Foundation videos scored much higher in the PEMAT than our reviewed videos, they did not appear within the top 25 search results for OAB. We believe there is great opportunity for the AUA/UCF and SUFU to increase its outreach to patients on platforms like YouTube. Source of Funding: none