ArticleBMC public health2024
Contents analysis of thyroid cancer-related information uploaded to YouTube by physicians in Korea: endorsing thyroid cancer screening, potentially leading to overdiagnosis.
Article in BMC public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of explanatory information on parental intentions regarding child participation in thyroid ultrasound examinations after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident: a questionnaire survey.Endocrine journal · 2026Article
- Unravelling the rise in thyroid cancer incidence and addressing overdiagnosis.Nature reviews. Endocrinology · 2026Review
- Quality and reliability of myelodysplastic syndromes-related health information on Chinese short-video platforms: a multi-platform cross-sectional analysis.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Article
- Applications of Natural Language Processing in Otolaryngology: A Scoping Review.The Laryngoscope · 2025Article
- Video platforms and sexual healthcare in China: assessment of content on premature ejaculation.Translational andrology and urology · 2025Article
- Harnessing Social Media Data to Understand Information Needs About Kidney Diseases and Emotional Experiences With Disease Management: Topic and Sentiment Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Videos in short-video sharing platforms as sources of information on osteoarthritis: cross-sectional content analysis study.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Videos on YouTube, Bilibili, TikTok as sources of medical information on Hashimoto's thyroiditis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Bruxism treatment on Youtube: evaluating reliability and information accuracy.BMC oral health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThyroid cancer overdiagnosis is a major public health issue in South Korea, which has the highest incidence rate. The accessibility of information through the Internet, particularly on YouTube, could potentially impact excessive screening. This study aimed to analyze the content of thyroid cancer-related YouTube videos, particularly those from 2016 onwards, to evaluate the potential spread of misinformation.
methodsA total of 326 videos for analysis were collected using a video search protocol with the keyword "thyroid cancer" on YouTube. This study classified the selected YouTube videos as either provided by medical professionals or not and used topic clustering with LDA (latent dirichlet allocation), sentiment analysis with KoBERT (Korean bidirectional encoder representations from transformers), and reliability evaluation to analyze the content. The proportion of mentions of poor prognosis for thyroid cancer and the categorization of advertising content was also analyzed.
resultsVideos by medical professionals were categorized into 7 topics, with "Thyroid cancer is not a 'Good cancer'" being the most common. The number of videos opposing excessive thyroid cancer screening decreased gradually yearly. Videos advocating screening received more favorable comments from viewers than videos opposing excessive thyroid cancer screening. Patient experience videos were categorized into 6 topics, with the "Treatment process and after-treatment" being the most common.
conclusionThis study found that a significant proportion of videos uploaded by medical professionals on thyroid cancer endorse the practice, potentially leading to excessive treatments. The study highlights the need for medical professionals to provide high-quality and unbiased information on social media platforms to prevent the spread of medical misinformation and the need for criteria to judge the content and quality of online health information.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.