YouTube is an important resource for hyperhidrosis patients

Abstract

Background: YouTube is one of the most used information sources. Hyperhidrosis is a disease that needs treatment mostly due to social complaints. Methods: Search titles ‘Hand sweating, Excessive sweating, Armpit sweating, and Hyperhidrosis’ were searched for separately on YouTube. A total of 400 videos, consisting of 100 under each title, were evaluated. Data such as who uploaded the video, which treatment plan it contained, the upload date, country of upload, duration, number of times watched, and rating were recorded. The Video Power index (VPI) was used to evaluate the popularity of the videos in the study. Results: The number of views, number of likes, and VPI of the video group with a duration of 232 s or more were found to be significantly higher than the video group with a shorter duration (P =0.001, P =0.000, and P = 0.000). In commercial videos, the rate of videos featuring non-surgical treatment was found to be the highest at92.1%. It was found that the videos containing surgical treatment were older than the videos containing non-surgical treatment (P =0.028). Conclusion: The internet is an important source of information in diseases such as hyperhidrosis that cause social dysfunction in young patients and the treatment decision is determined entirely by the level of complaint the patient feels. On the YouTube platform, which is one of these sources of information, it was seen that video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, which is the definitive and permanent treatment of hyperhidrosis, has started to lose its place to alternative methods in recent years.