Even doctors consult YouTube to learn how to perform operations they have not done before.
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Surely more than one of you have consulted YouTube to carry out repairs on household appliances, for the odd botch at home or to repair the screen of a mobile phone or replace a component on a PC or laptop. Well, it turns out that YouTube not only helps us to carry out these processes, but also even doctors use it as a guide to learn to do certain surgical operations before performing them.
The discovery is surprising and has made experts now express their concern and ask for much more specialized content filtering in this ambit. A doctor has actually seen a vein, he has already started the Osso VR company dedicated exclusively to creating video tutorials that help doctors to prepare their operations in virtual environments before performing them in real operating rooms.
YouTube, help me operate on cataracts
The idea came to Dr. Justin Barad, who often encountered a procedure that he had not done or who had to handle an instrument that he had never used in an operation. The solution was on YouTube, a service that he turned into an educational complement and that became part of his procedures in the operating room to guide him in real time while he operated.
That prompted a project that has now become a reality in the form of a startup. With Osso VR this doctor has made available to his professional colleagues a platform where you can consult procedures and video tutorials with which to prepare your operations.
Barad’s experience has become commonplace in medicine. CNBC indicated how in its own investigation it had discovered thousands of videos on YouTube showing how various medical procedures are carried out. Some of these videos have more than a million visits and allow us to observe how cataracts are operated, how you give birth or how cosmetic surgery operations are done.
These videos have become a valuable tool for doctors, who upload their own procedures to help other doctors. A study carried out in early 2019 revealed that there are already more than 20,000 videos of this type compared to 500 in 2009.
A fantastic idea that YouTube should moderate and filter
Doctors seem to be delighted with this type of aid, although some warn of the risks. Dr. Oliver Aalami, a cardiovascular surgeon at Stanford Hospital, indicated after watching a video and using it for an operation that “it was helpful, but i think some of those videos should be verified. A bit like what Twitter does with its blue emblems. “
As with other types of tutorials, there are videos that are more reliable than others. Another recent study found that there were 68,000 videos related to a procedure called “distal radius fracture immobilization.” The experts evaluated these contents based on their technical and educational level, and only 16 of those videos made it through the filter, and some of them did not offer verifiable information about who performed these procedures and their medical qualifications.
YouTube’s algorithms don’t help either and sometimes recommend videos in which the chosen technique is not applied optimally, something that for example happened with videos of the procedure called laparoscopic cholecystectomy in which half showed the use of techniques and maneuvers not particularly safe.
This filtering and content curation process is very expensive, and only doctors can do it with guarantees. Google seems to be aware of the situation, they indicate on CNBC, and for example it has begun to demand that descriptive titles be used in those videos. The head of Google’s health area, David Feinberg, highlighted in a recent conference that many surgeons end up going to YouTube, and he left implicit that need to manage this content.
