Public-Facing Short Videos on Paediatric General Anaesthesia and Child Neurodevelopment: Quality…

StudyHealth expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy· Aug 2026

Public-Facing Short Videos on Paediatric General Anaesthesia and Child Neurodevelopment: Quality, Misinformation and Implications for Parent-Centred Risk Communication.

Chong Xu, Yuchang Fang, Lei Yao, Jie Song

Child Development & BehaviourStudyClinical practiceQ1IF 3.6

Over half of short videos on child anesthesia and neurodevelopment contained misinformation

Public-Facing Short Videos on Paediatric General Anaesthesia and Child Neurodevelopment: Quality, Misinformation and Implications for Parent-Centred Risk Communication.

Chong Xu … Jie Song

Health expectations · Aug 2026

Background

Caregivers may encounter short videos about paediatric general anaesthesia and neurodevelopment before consultation.

Methods

On 15 August 2025, we used newly created accounts to retrieve the first 100 results from Douyin and Bilibili for two Chinese search terms.

n = 74

Results

51 of 95 videos gave misleading claims, most often false safety assurances

Misinformation

53.7%

False safety assurance

45.3%

More results

Douyin videos attracted more engagement, but quality did not differ by platform.

Videos uploaded by anaesthesiologists, hospitals and news agencies tended to score higher than those uploaded by non-anaesthesiologists in several domains, although these subgroup comparisons were exploratory.

More results

After false-discovery-rate correction, stratified analyses showed no significant differences by platform or uploader.

Engagement was not a reliable indicator of quality, whereas video duration was positively correlated with mDISCERN, GQS and MQ-VET.

“

Conclusion · 1 of 3

Short videos were readily accessible but uneven in reliability and transparency. Popularity did not indicate quality.

Conclusion · 2 of 3

Preoperative communication should address online information, correct binary claims, explain exposure-related modifiers and direct families to trustworthy clinician-produced resources.

Conclusion · 3 of 3

Caregiver exposure and decision outcomes were not measured. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Ten family contributors took part in brief one-to-one PPIE consultations during pre-anaesthesia assessment.