Are YouTube videos on treatments for temporomandibular disorders reliable?: An observational study

Today, people frequently turn to the internet to seek information about temporomandibular joint disorders and treatments, as in all other health areas. However, does the information presented online without professional evaluation truly reflect the facts, and if so, to what extent? Based on this question, our study aims to evaluate YouTube™ videos on the treatment of temporomandibular joint diseases. In this cross-sectional study, a search was conducted on YouTube using the search term “TMJ (temporomandibular joint) treatment” for YouTube videos. One hundred sixty-three videos that met the study criteria were evaluated for content usefulness by 3 researchers. The videos were categorized as having low and high content according to usefulness score. All videos were classified according to the source and type of the videos. Statistical analysis were conducted using with Chi-Square test and Mann–Whitney U test. It was found that 130 videos had low content, while 33 videos had high content. It was observed that the number of views, duration in minutes, number of comments, number of likes, number of days since uploading and the rate of views were higher in videos with high content (P < .05). However, no significant association was found between the usefulness score and the source that uploaded the video and video type (P > .05). The results of our study reveal that the vast majority of videos on the treatment of temporomandibular diseases on YouTube contain insufficient information.