YouTube as a potential learning tool to help distinguish tonic-clonic seizures from nonepileptic attacks.

This study set out to determine whether the videos on YouTube accurately depict the type of seizures that a medical student may search for. Two consultant epileptologists independently assessed the top YouTube videos returned following searches for eight terms relating to different categories of seizures. The videos were rated for their technical quality, concordance of diagnosis with an epileptologist-assigned diagnosis, and efficacy as a learning tool for medical education. Of the 200 videos assessed, 106 (63%) met the inclusion criteria for further analysis. Technical quality was generally good and only interfered with the diagnostic process in 8.5% of the videos. Of the included videos, 40.6-46.2% were judged to depict the purported diagnosis with moderate agreement between raters (75% agreement, κ=0.50). Of the videos returned after searching "tonic-clonic seizure", 28.6-35.7% were judged to show nonepileptic seizures with almost perfect interrater agreement (92.9% agreement, κ=0.84). Of the videos returned following the search "pseudoseizure", 77.8-88.9% of videos were judged to show nonepileptic seizures with substantial agreement (88.9% agreement, κ=0.61). Across all search terms, 19.8-33% of videos were judged as potentially useful as a learning resource, with fair agreement between raters (75.5% agreement, κ=0.38). These findings suggest that the majority of videos on YouTube claiming to show specific seizure subtypes are inaccurate, and YouTube should not be re...

Source: Epilepsy and Behaviour - July 25, 2014 Category: Neurology Authors: Muhammed L, Adcock JE, Sen A Tags: Epilepsy Behav Source Type: research