APS Aesthetic Plastic Surgery · 2024

TikTok Videos Related to Rhinoplasty in China: Characteristics and the Quality of the Information

Chen K, Cai Y, Jiang L.

PubMed 38480654 Publisher (DOI)Free full text (PMC)

What this paper says

Of 184 rhinoplasty videos on Chinese TikTok, 70.65 percent were posted by certified plastic surgeons and 3.26 percent contained obvious errors or misleading information.

Overview

Rhinoplasty videos circulate widely on Chinese TikTok, and the authors set out to describe them and evaluate their quality. They collected 184 video samples, extracted basic information about each, and scored them with the PEMAT-A/V tool, a standard instrument for rating how understandable and actionable patient education material is.

Sections of note

Design: content and quality analysis of 184 videos. Level of evidence IV.
The sampled videos received roughly 4.8 million likes, 900,000 comments and 300,000 favorites.
130 videos, 70.65 percent, were posted by certified plastic surgeons.
6 videos, 3.26 percent, contained obvious errors or misleading information.
Median PEMAT-A/V total score across all videos: 85.71, interquartile range 78.57 to 92.45.
Videos by plastic surgeons had the highest comprehension score, median 100 percent.
Videos from news media, 16 in total, scored lowest on usability and on total score, median 75 percent.
By topic, content on surgical risks and contraindications scored highest, median 92.86 percent, while complaint related content scored lowest, median 75 percent.

What it means for a patient

Most rhinoplasty content on this platform came from certified surgeons and scored well for being understandable.
Outright misinformation was uncommon in this sample, at about 3 in 100 videos.
News media coverage scored lower than surgeon made content, and complaint focused videos scored lowest overall.
Limits: 184 videos is a small sample of a large platform, the quality tool measures clarity rather than medical accuracy, and only obvious errors were counted.

Why this paper matters

Short video platforms are now a primary source of information for people considering cosmetic surgery, and their content is unregulated. Measuring quality with a standard instrument gives a baseline. What the tool cannot measure is whether the advice is clinically sound, only whether it is clear and actionable.

Terms

PEMAT-A/V: a tool scoring how understandable and actionable audiovisual patient education material is.
Comprehension or understandability score: how easily a viewer can grasp the message.
Actionability: whether the material tells the viewer what to do.
Interquartile range: the middle half of a set of values, from the 25th to 75th percentile.
Contraindication: a reason a treatment should not be given.

Summary written by rhinoplasty.cc from the abstract, 2026-09-09; not medical advice. The authors' own abstract follows.

Abstract

Background: There are numerous videos related to rhinoplasty on TikTok in China. The objective is to examine videos on Chinese TikTok regarding rhinoplasty surgery and evaluate the content quality of rhinoplasty-related videos on TikTok.

Method: We collected 184 Chinese video samples related to rhinoplasty and extracted basic information. We used the PEMAT-A/V tool to evaluate each video.

Results: A total of 184 videos were included in the study. The sampled videos received approximately 4.8 million likes, 900,000 comments, and 300,000 favorites. Most of the videos (n = 130, 70.65%) were posted by certified plastic surgeons on the TikTok platform. This study found that 6 (3.26%) videos contained obvious errors or misleading information. Regarding the PEMAT-A/V, the median total score was 85.71 (n = 184, IQR = 78.57-92.45%). Videos created by plastic surgeons had the highest comprehension score (n = 130, median = 100%, IQR = 91.67-100%), while videos from news media (n = 16, median = 75%, IQR = 70.76-77.34%) had the lowest usability and PEMAT-A/V total scores. In terms of video content, the PEMAT-A/V total score for surgical risks/contraindications related content (n = 15, median = 92.86%, IQR = 83.48-92.86%) was the highest, while scores for complaint-related content (n = 20, median = 75, IQR = 71.43-78.57%) were the lowest.

Conclusions: This study is the first report in China to evaluate the quality of information in nose plastic surgery-related videos on TikTok. We found that the quality of videos created by plastic surgeons on the TikTok platform is generally high, while videos provided by news media have lower quality. We encourage healthcare professionals to share more high-quality information on TikTok and educate patients on how to properly handle misinformation.

Level Of Evidence Iv: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

Abstract as indexed by PubMed; the article is open access (PubMed Central).