Evaluating Quality and Reliability of Most-Viewed YouTube Videos on Topical Steroid Withdrawal

Topical corticosteroid withdrawal (TSW) is an adverse response to chronic misuse of topical corticosteroids (TCS) consisting of erythema, scaling, burning, and pruritus after discontinuing TCS. YouTube (www.youtube.com), the most popular video-sharing platform worldwide, is increasingly used by patients as a source of health information.¹ User-generated YouTube content does not undergo review to ensure information accuracy and is susceptible to bias. Therefore, we sought to evaluate the quality and reliability of the top ten most-viewed YouTube videos on TSW using the modified DISCERN^2-4 (mDISCERN) tool and the Global Quality Scale (GQS) (Table 1). The mDISCERN tool^2-4 measures reliability and GQS evaluates the quality and scientific accuracy of videos. A YouTube search was conducted on May 10, 2022, using keywords "topical steroid withdrawal" and the top 10 most viewed videos (average of 189,638 views, SD=229,329) were analyzed (Table 2). Scores for each video were determined by 2 independent viewers and an average was generated for each video. Analyses were conducted using one-way ANOVA, unpaired t-tests, and linear regression.