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INTRODUCTION:
Patients are turning to YouTube for medical and surgical information. The Society of Vascular Surgery (SVS) has sponsored a YouTube Channel. Some of the major categories of videos include: peripheral arterial disease (PAD), abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA), and veins (V). We set forth to compare YouTube results to gain insight to how vascular surgeons compares to other practitioners within these categories.
METHODS:
YouTube was accessed in August 2015 for the key search words of “peripheral arterial disease”, “abdominal aortic aneurysms” and “varicose veins.” All results were sorted based on total views. The top 100 videos in each category were examined for practitioner - vascular surgeon vs. other (cardiologist, interventional radiologist, multi-discipline, etc.), duration of video, age of video and total views. All industry and educational sites were excluded from analysis.
RESULTS:
A total of 11,900, 21,200 and 33,700 videos were found for each category PAD, AAA, and V categories respectively. Filtering down the results to a definitive practitioner within the first 100 videos found on search duration, age of video and total views were compared:

Analysis of 300 YouTube Videos in Selected Categories

	PAD (n=51)			AAA (n=43)			V (n=44)
	Vascular 47%	Other 53%	p value†	Vascular 40%	Other 60%	p value†	Vascular 34%	Other 66%	p value†
Duration(m:s)	8:44 +/- 15:38	5:46 +/- 7:22	0.3076	5:14 +/- 3:10	6:52 +/- 11:16	0.4495	4:15 +/- 2:32	4:37 +/- 3.34	0.1680
Age (yrs.)	3.49 +/- 1:6	4.68 +/- 1.9	0.0328	4:53 +/- 1.84	4.65 +/- 2.54	0.8867	4.8 +/- 2.11	4.17 +/- 2.12	0.4063
Views (K)	8.62 +/- 1.5	9.31 +/- 5.8	0.8415	20.72 +/- 2.9	31.05 +/- 5.3	0.2145	77.97 +/- 8.5	73.56 +/- 5.3	0.3830

†students t-test
Examining the top 20 sites in each category a vascular surgeon was in the majority of views in PAD and AAA (70% and 80% respectively). In the V category, a vascular specialist was identified in 50% of the videos. Three SVS videos were listed in the top 100 videos in each category of PAD and AAA. There were no SVS videos found in the V category. No other national professional society had videos in any category in the top 100.
CONCLUSIONS:
The vascular specialist has substantial representation in the three categories examined in terms of videos that patients would potentially be viewing in terms of the three disease states. The SVS YouTube videos have representation in the upper tiers of views in the PAD and AAA categories. PAD had significantly newer videos compared to other practitioners. Vascular specialist videos trended toward fewer total views compared to other practitioners. Vascular surgeons need to provide online content that informs patients about these disease states and also distinguished the specialty from other practitioners.