Background: TikTok is a powerful and popular source of patient education. However, the lack of content regulation allows for the potential spread of medical misinformation.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to analyze the source, content, quality, and reliability of TikTok posts regarding non-surgical cosmetic facial injectable treatments, including Botox and fillers.

Methods: The TikTok application was queried with 14 popular hashtags related to nonsurgical facial injectable treatments. The top 25 search result videos from each hashtag were included in the analysis. Videos were categorized based on content creator, video type, and descriptive metrics collected for each result. Educational videos were further analyzed for content quality with the validated modified DISCERN score and the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) scales. Univariate and linear regression models were utilized for content analysis between groups.

Results: The included 340 videos totaled 306,552,644 views; 22,715,689 likes; 220,072 comments; and 352,614 shares. Most videos were uploaded by nonphysician healthcare providers (n = 126, 37.1%), and patient experience (n = 130, 38.2%) was the most common video category. Healthcare team content creators had significantly lower median views, likes, comments, shares, and engagement when compared to non-healthcare team content (P < .001). DISCERN scores for information reliability were significantly higher in physician-created videos than nonphysician and nonphysician healthcare provider created videos (2 vs 1.5, P < .001, 2 vs 1.5 P = .001, respectively).

Conclusions: The overall quality of TikTok videos regarding nonsurgical cosmetic facial injectable treatments was low, which may stem from a lack of content from physician content creators.

Joseph A. Ricci MD

Appearances