Assessment of the quality and reliability of the information on spasticity on youtube

•Youtube is an important source of information in the field of health in recent years.•Spasticity is an important clinical phenomenon that can develop particularly after several neurological disorders.•Most of the youtube videos on spasticity are of good quality and reliable.•Physicians should caution their patients to use YouTube to watch videos uploaded by health professionals. Youtube has become an influential source of health. This study aimed to evaluate the reliability and quality of YouTube videos on spasticity. The keywords “ spasticity, spasticity treatment, spasticity exercises” were used to search for videos. According to the search results, 180 videos were analyzed, videometric characteristics of the videos were recorded, and 2 groups were formed as health professionals and non-health professionals according to the video source. In addition, low, medium and high quality groups were formed using the global quality score (GQS). The reliability of the videos was evaluated using the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) scale. Video popularity was assessed using the video power index (VPI). After excluding videos that met the exclusion criteria, the remaining 68 videos were analyzed. The videos were uploaded by healthcare professionals (n = 47, 69.1%) and non-healthcare professionals (n = 21, 30.9%). The popularity (VPI), reliability (mDISCERN) and quality (GQS) of videos uploaded by healthcare professionals were significantly higher (p = 0.002, p = 0.001, p = 0.021, respectively). Most of the videos were of high quality according to GQS (n = 40, 58.8%). All of the high quality videos were of healthcare professionals. The number of sources from healthcare professionals was significantly higher in high quality videos than in both low (p = 0.001) and medium (p = 0.001) quality videos. We can conclude that most of the YouTube videos on spasticity are reliable and of high quality. However, it should be kept in mind that patients may be exposed to low-quality and unreliable videos with misleading content.