Objective To evaluate the educational quality, reliability, and transparency of YouTube™ videos on lipoedema, and to examine associations with uploader type and engagement metrics. Methods On 15 May 2025 we searched YouTube™ for “lipoedema,” screened the first 200 relevance-ranked items, and included videos ≥60 s with intelligible audio. Advertisements, duplicates and soundless videos were excluded. Two independent physicians in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM disagreements were discussed and original ratings retained for agreement analyses. We recorded upload date, duration, views, likes, comments, channel subscribers, uploader category, and content domain. Results We analyzed 92 YouTube™ lipoedema videos uploaded between 25 February 2015 and 8 January 2025. Uploader mix: vascular surgeons 39.1% (largest) and PM the most common topic was definition + symptoms + management (26.1%). Mean DISCERN totals were 33.47 ± 9.88 and 33.42 ± 8.68 (both poor); mean GQS 2.18 ± 0.82 and 2.43 ± 0.81; only 6.6% were high quality and none scored 5/5. Views correlated strongly with likes and comments (both p < .001), moderately with duration ( p < .01), and weakly with subscribers ( p < .05). Inter-rater agreement was strong (r = 0.859/0.663/1.000; all p < .001). Conclusion The overall quality and transparency of YouTube™ lipoedema videos are suboptimal despite substantial engagement. Increasing expert-authored, evidence-based content—particularly from PM&R— and co-produced patient-clinician videos may better align reliability with reach.
Çiftkaya et al. (Wed,) studied this question.