ArticleSurgical endoscopy2025
Hernia mesh and social media: misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest.
Article in Surgical endoscopy, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Groin hernia.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPatients often utilize social media platforms as a resource for medical information. Lately, hernia mesh has been surrounded by controversy due to highly publicized mesh recalls. We aimed to assess the rates of misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest of hernia mesh information on Facebook and YouTube.
methodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study of Facebook posts and YouTube videos using the search term "hernia mesh." The first 150 public Facebook posts and YouTube videos were initially selected, in addition to the first 30 posts of public Facebook groups. Video/post characteristics and the presence of misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest were independently recorded by three trained raters. Fleiss' kappa coefficient (ĸ) was calculated to determine Inter-rater agreement.
resultsA total of 129 Facebook posts and 108 YouTube videos were analyzed. 29% of posts/videos were uploaded by a law firm and 24% were uploaded by medical professionals. The raters indicated that an average of 11% posts/videos contained misinformation, 17% involved legal solicitation, and 21% included conflicts of interest. Inter-rater agreement was fair for misinformation (ĸ = 0.380-0.382), substantial/almost perfect for legal solicitation (ĸ = 0.780-0.876), and moderate for conflict of interest (ĸ = 0.448-0.505).
conclusionsWith regard to hernia mesh, misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest are somewhat common on popular social media platforms. Trained raters had a high level of agreement on legal solicitation but limited agreement on misinformation. Our findings suggest that recognizing misinformation on social media regarding hernia mesh is difficult.
Indexed as
Identifiers
39433582What 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.