Is YouTubeTM a Useful Resource of Information About Xerostomia Treatment

Betül Çalık1, Meltem Koray1, Andy Wolff2
1Istanbul University Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Fatih, Vezneciler, 341116, Istanbul, Turkey.
2Saliwell Ltd., Harutzim, Israel.

Objective: Xerostomia is the feeling of dryness in the oral cavity, which mostly results from insufficent saliva secretion or complete lack of saliva. Saliva plays a vital role in maintaining oral health and also has a tremendeus effect on the systemic health. Research shows that xerostomia affects millions of patients throughout the world and has a negative outcome in quality of life. This situation, which makes even the simplest activities such as eating, tasting and speaking difficult, compels the patients to search for solutions. Today, thanks to the easy accessibility of the internet, many patients who are uncomfortable with this situation want to benefit from the information provided in online platforms on the causes and treatments of xerostomia. YouTubeTM, where both visual tools and informative content are used together, is one of the most used platforms for this purpose. However, there is no evidence that videos in YouTube about xerostomia treatment have been evaluated systematically. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of free access videos on xerostomia treatment in the YouTubeTM platform. Materials-Methods: We conducted a search on YouTubeTM using the term “xerostomia” and selected the first 25 videos in order of relevance. The following exclusion criteria were applied: language other than English, videos that did not cover xerostomia treatment, videos on nonhuman specimens, videos without title or sound, advertisements, and videos longer than 30 minutes. Twenty-one selected videos were classified based on their duration, country of origin, date of upload to the system, information source, number of views, and likes and dislikes. These materials were then analyzed for their content. Results: The majority of the analyzed videos were uploded by health-related companies and informational websites. Their mean duration was 5.03 min, with a mean quantity of 441 likes and 41 comments per video. The average usefulness score of video contents was found to be 5 out of 8. Conclusion: These materials uploaded by healthcare professionals and health-related companies, could be helpful as resources for patient education.

Keywords: Xerostomia, Youtube, Dry mouth