YouTube™ as a Source of Information on Acupuncture for Correction of Breech Presentation

Abstract

Background and aim: Breech presentation is a condition that occurs in rare cases in pregnancy. Although guidelines recommend a cesarian section or an external cephalic version in case of breech, alternative procedures like acupuncture, are also available. Information on this approach is mostly found by patients through social media; we aimed to study content quality and the reliability of information present on YouTube™ (Google LLC, Mountain View, California, United States), one of the most popular.

Methods: Two gynecologists and an anesthesiologist, who was qualified as an acupuncturist, rated the reliability and the content quality of 23 of the first 100 results from YouTube. Normal data distribution was tested with the Shapiro-Wilk test. General features of videos, reliability, and content quality were compared with the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test (continuous variables) and the Chi-square test (categorical variables). All tests were two-sided, and the statistical significance level was determined at p<0.05.

Results: Concerning reliability, all videos were rated poorly while only one was judged as sufficiently high in quality content. Lower scores in terms of reliability and content quality resulted from the reviewers' evaluation with no videos reported as suggestable to patients. Two videos were considered fit to be suggested to patients by the gynecologist reviewers.

Conclusions: Information about the role and the success rate of acupuncture for converting breech presentation found on YouTube are poorly reliable, low-quality, and not valid for patients. It should be a physician's duty to provide correct information to patients.

Keywords: acupuncture; breech; breech presentation; obstetrics; pregnancy; youtube.

Figure 1. Types of breech presentation: complete breech, incomplete breech (kneeling or footling), frank breech

Figure commissioned by A. Libretti, exclusively for this article