Youtube as a source of information vagal nerve stimulation: A quality analysis

•You tube videos about vagal nerve stimulation are mostly on general information, surgical procedures, patient experiences and magnet use.•The reliability of the information cannot be predicted but especially the patients/parents who receive reliable information from their doctors can benefit from patient videos describing their experiences.•Videos containing negative experiences such as complications or ineffectiveness were not shared and this would be misleading.•The main sources of the high-quality videos were physicians.•High skilled and experienced professionals should create videos on YouTube to ensure that patients and parents can access more useful, high-quality, and accurate information on VNS. To evaluate the quality of available information on Youtube videos about VNS as a “source of health information” for patients with drug resistant epilepsy. Youtube videos were searched and screened using the terms “VNS for seizures,” and “VNS surgery,” “VNS epilepsy” in May 2023. The quality of the videos was evaluated the Quality Criteria for Consumer Health Information (DISCERN) and Global Quality Scale (GQS). The videos were analyzed in terms of content, accuracy, reliability, and quality. A total of 104 videos were searched. After excluding duplicate or inappropriate videos, 51 videos were analyzed. Youtube videos about vagal nerve stimulation are mostly on general information, surgical procedures, patient experiences and magnet use. When video sources are examined according to the quality, according to GQS, 75 % of high quality videos were narrated by physicians, all intermediate quality videos were narrated by physicians, and low quality ones narrated by physicians were 47.4 % and 28.9 % by the patients. All of the videos narrated by the patients were of low quality. There was a significant and strong correlation between GQS and Discern score (r = 0.807, p