Purpose: To investigate the content and demographic features of YouTube videos about Smile Direct Club, Byte, Candid and NewSmile, and perform a sentiment analysis of related comments.
Materials and methods: The terms “Smile Direct Club”, “Byte”, “Candid” and “NewSmile” were searched on YouTube. The first 200 videos were viewed and 32 were analysed. The demographic features and content of the videos were gathered and assessed. Comments were classified by commenter status, difficulties experienced and content, and were used to measure the emotional data in the sentiment analysis. Pearson chi-squared, Fisher exact and Kruskal Wallis tests and analysis of variance were used for statistical analysis.
Results: All the videos examined were uploaded by aligner patients and documented their experiences. Of these, 75% were rated as being of moderate quality, while 37.5% were considered highly useful in providing valuable information to future patients. The most frequently mentioned topics were cost/economic considerations (n = 31), the reason for choosing the treatment method (n = 27), and complications/pain (n = 27). The least mentioned subjects were aesthetic situations (n = 15) and treatment objectives and limiting factors (n = 16). When the distribution of comments based on the focus of the content was examined, 14.7% were found to be related to complications.
Conclusions: Although social media offers considerable benefits in every aspect of life, it is still essential to obtain an expert opinion on health-related issues.