(UroToday.com) The 2022 American Urological Association Annual Meeting included a stone disease session featuring work from Mr. Parris Diaz and colleagues presenting results of their study assessing the quality of content on urolithiasis procedures posted on social media. With the incidence and prevalence of kidney stones increasing globally, more people are requiring surgical intervention for treatment. As a result of the rise of mobile devices and technology in general, the use of social media has only grown to encompass more facets of daily life including health questions. As more people turn to social media platforms such as Facebook for quick, convenient information, a need to evaluate the quality of content for kidney stone surgery arises. As such, this study assessed the quality of health information available for individuals seeking to make informed decisions regarding their stone disease.
A popular content marketing platform called BuzzSumo was used to identify the most popular stone surgery content on the following social media platforms between March 2016-February 2021: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and Pinterest. Content performance was based on “engagements”, characterized as the cumulative number of shares, likes, and comments an article or video received. This content was narrowed down with various criteria, including the need for more than 100 engagements, an unexpired link, written in English, and related to kidney stone surgery. To assess quality, researchers used the DISCERN instrument, a brief questionnaire providing users with a valid and reliable way of rating consumer health information. Score ratings were given from 1 to 5, with score ratings of 1 describing “serious or extensive shortcomings” and scores of 5 describing “health information with minimal shortcomings". Quantitative data were statistically evaluated by ANOVA testing.
According to analysis, the social media platform with the most sharing activity was Facebook with “likes” being the most common method of engagement. The PCNL procedure was found to have had the most views on YouTube videos as well as more engagements (in the form of mainly shares and likes) than any kidney stone surgical intervention.
Articles were found to have higher DISCERN scores than YouTube videos for each type of kidney stone surgical intervention; however, both kinds of content were still rated as low-quality overall (2.82 for articles, 2.27 for YouTube videos). Content relating to the URS procedure was considered of moderate quality in text (score of 3.19) and video (score of 3.01) formats, whereas ESWL and PCNL were of low quality in both formats.
At the end of the presentation, one moderator posed a particularly thought-provoking question, based on the premise that YouTube is extremely popular because of the ease of accessibility. While a password-protected platform decreases the number of viewers, it also serves as an area where quality control can occur. When asked about the solution to this issue, Mr. Diaz replied that the solution must come in the form of initiative of urologists, rather than “tending to leave it in the hands of companies without the purest of intentions”. He argued for the importance of a bigger role for urologists in social media and public policy at large.
Mr. Diaz concluded with the following take home messages for this study assessing the quality of social media content on stone removal procedures:
- The stone surgery content on social media has extensive shortcomings that may be poorly contributing toward the decisions of patients.
- The low quality could contribute to patient misinformation while highlighting the need for the creation of engaging, high-quality content.
- If urologists were to participate in this creation, the quality of content could significantly increase patient knowledge of these procedures and push forward the effective management of stone disease.
- The final quote from Mr. Diaz: “As urologists, it is our role to give adequate information and be more present on social media to vet these sources”.
Presented by: Parris Diaz, Department of Urology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
Written by: Kelvin Vo, Department of Urology, University of California Irvine, @kelvinvouci on Twitter during the 2022 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, Fri, May 13 – Mon, May 16, 2022.
References:
- Parris Diaz, Rebecca A. Takele, Sapna Thaker, Karan N. Thaker, Jorge Ballon, Mayra Lucas, Kevin Kunitsky, Kymora B. Scotland. Evaluating the Quality of Social Media Content on Urolithiasis Procedures [abstract]. In: American Urological Association Annual Meeting, May 13-16, 2022, New Orleans, Louisiana