The reliability of trabeculectomy surgical videos on the internet for educational purposes in the changing world

The use of social media that facilitates access to surgical training is increasing among general practitioners/surgeons. The present study aimed to evaluate the educational quality of videos on social media and the medical education websites in terms of trabeculectomy surgery.In this cross-sectional and register-based study, the term "trabeculectomy" has been searched on 22 websites containing medical surgery training videos. Demographical features and descriptive statistics of videos are noted. All videos were evaluated independently by two ophthalmologists according to DISCERN, Journal of American Medical Association, and Global Quality scoring system. The main 11 steps of trabeculectomy surgery were taken into consideration in each video and Video Quality Score was determined based on these steps.In total, 731 videos were watched and 634 were excluded and 97 videos were included in the study. The total quality of all videos according to DISCERN, JAMA, GQS, and VQS scores were 31.6 ± 9.1 (poor quality), 1.3 ± 0.4 (poor quality), 2.6 ± 0.9 (fair quality), and 6.9 ± 2.1 (poor quality) respectively. Only 6 of the 97 evaluated videos included all the steps of trabeculectomy surgery. Videos have longer duration, videos with narration or videos with descriptive subtitles were found to be significantly higher quality than those are not.The educational quality of internet videos may be far from the quality it should be and it is indisputable that it is necessary to be able to access surgical educational videos that are peer-viewed and whose quality is not doubted.