Concerns of Quality and Safety in Public Domain Surgical Education Videos: An Assessment of the Critical View of Safety in Frequently Used Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy Videos

Abstract

Background: Online videos are among the most common resources for case preparation. Using crowd sourcing, we evaluated the relationship between operative quality and viewing characteristics of online laparoscopic cholecystectomy videos.

Study design: We edited 160 online videos of laparoscopic cholecystectomy to 60 seconds or less. Crowd workers (CW) rated videos using Global Objective Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills (GOALS), the critical view of safety (CVS) criteria, and assigned overall pass/fail ratings if CVS was achieved; linear mixed effects models derived average ratings. Views, likes, dislikes, subscribers, and country were recorded for subset analysis of YouTube videos. Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC) assessed correlation between performance measures.

Results: One video (0.06%) achieved a passing CVS score of ≥5; 23%, ≥4; 44%, ≥3; 79%, ≥2; and 100% ≥1. Pass/fail ratings correlated to CVS, SCC 0.95 (p < 0.001) and to GOALS, SCC 0.79 (p < 0.001). YouTube videos (n = 139) with higher views, likes, or subscribers did not correlate with better quality. The average CVS and GOALS scores were no different for videos with >20,000 views (22%) compared with those with <20,000 (78%).

Conclusions: There is an incredibly low frequency of CVS and average GOALS technical performance in frequently used online surgical videos of LC. Favorable characteristics, such as number of views or likes, do not translate to higher quality.