To compare the quality of robotic prostatectomy surgical videos on the popular website YouTube with more curated, professional sources using the Global Evaluative Assessment of Robotic Skills (GEARS) criteria.

A search was performed on YouTube for robotic prostatectomy. Results were sorted by views and the first ten that met inclusion criteria were selected for review. To represent curated sources five robotic prostatectomy videos were selected from the DaVinci Surgery Community (DVS) video repository and the AUA Surgical Video Library in order of publishing from present to past. Videos were edited to be deidentified. The videos were reviewed blindly in parallel and graded using the GEARS criteria. Concordance among reviewers was measured using Chronbach's alpha. Comparisons between groups were made using student t-test.

There was a high level of reliability of overall GEARS scores between reviewers for each video (α = 0.843). There was no significant difference between overall GEARS scores between the YouTube videos (mean 24.8, SDEV 1.85) and the AUA group (mean 24.3, SDEV 6.18) (P = 0.78). YouTube videos scored higher than the DVS videos (mean 22.1, SDEV 2.34) (P 0.03).

Despite concerns about the quality of surgical videos on YouTube for education, the most viewed surgical videos for robot assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy score as well or better than more curated sources using the GEARS criteria. This may represent selection via crowd sourcing of the best videos amongst a much larger overall quantity.