The Patient, the Provider, and the TikTok Creator: Qualitative Analysis of the Content and Quality of Videos on Prenatal Genetic Screening.

The study analysed publicly posted videos, not patients or clinicians, so it cannot show what patients understood or how they acted on the information. It captured only the top-viewed videos for three hashtags on one download date, January 7, 2025, and excluded non-English videos, videos longer than 10 minutes, and academic or unrelated content. TikTok views are not random; the platform's secret algorithms may prioritise attention-grabbing content, and the API may have shaped the data before researchers saw it. DISCERN was designed for written health material, and the team simplified it for videos; this may affect how well it measures quality of short TikTok content. After initial double coding, most videos were coded by one person, with questions resolved in weekly meetings, so independent coding was limited. Only 83 videos were included for the main coding, and 70 for the second tier. The team included academics and researchers without advanced degrees, and the authors say their position may influence interpretation.

The authors declared no known competing financial interests or personal relationships. The named funders were the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Utah and the National Institutes of Health.

Do not treat patient TikTok videos as good prenatal screening education because they receive many views. The study found patient videos had high engagement but were often rated poor or very poor for information quality and frequently used inaccurate sex and gender language.