Misinformation about acupuncture via YouTube

This study aims to appraise the utility, accuracy, and quality of information available on YouTube on acupuncture for chronic pain treatment. Using search terms such as “acupuncture for chronic pain” and “acupuncture pain relief”, the top 54 videos by view count were selected. Videos were included if they were:

• > 1 minute duration,
• contained audio in English,
• had > 7000 views,
• related to acupuncture.

Each video was categorised as either:

• useful,
• misleading,
• or neither.

Another primary outcome of interest was the quality and reliability of each video using validated instruments, including the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) tool and the Global Quality Scale (GQS). The means were calculated for the video production characteristics, production sources, and mDISCERN and GQS scores. Continuous and categorical outcomes were compared using Student’s t-test and chi-square test, respectively.

The results show that, of the 54 videos,

• 57.4% were categorized as useful,
• 14.8% were misleading,
• and 27.8% were neither.

Useful videos had a mean GQS and mDISCERN score of 3.77± 0.67 and 3.48± 0.63, respectively, while misleading videos had mean GQS and mDISCERN score of 2.50± 0.53 and 2.38± 0.52, respectively. 41.8% of the useful videos were produced by a healthcare institution while none of the misleading videos were produced by a healthcare institution. However, 87.5% of the misleading videos were produced by health media compared to only 25.8% of useful videos from health media.

The authors concluded that their analysis of the highest viewed acupuncture videos for chronic pain reveals only about half provide useful information, indicating a significant misinformation challenge for viewers. This underscores the urgent need for more high-quality, unbiased videos from healthcare institutions and physicians on complementary health practices like acupuncture.

This new analysis confirms what we and others have shown numerous times before: information about so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), which is abundantly available on the Internet, needs to be taken with a healthy pinch of salt. Whenever we studied the issue, our conclusions were even less optimistic than those of the present authors. In fact, most of the time we concluded that following such advice is a risk factor to our health.