Dissemination of Anesthesia Information During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic Through Twitter: An Infodemiology Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Twitter is a web-based social media platform that allows instantaneous sharing of user-generated messages (tweets). We performed an infodemiology study of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Twitter conversation related to anesthesiology to describe how Twitter has been used during the pandemic and ways to optimize Twitter use by anesthesiologists. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study of tweets related to the specialty of anesthesiology and COVID-19 tweeted between January 21 and October 13, 2020. A publicly available COVID-19 Twitter dataset was filtered for tweets meeting inclusion criteria (tweets including anesthesiology keywords). Using descriptive statistics, tweets were reviewed for tweet and account characteristics. Tweets were filtered for specific topics of interest likely to be impactful or informative to anesthesiologists of COVID-19 practice (airway management, personal protective equipment, ventilators, COVID testing, and pain management). Tweet activity was also summarized descriptively to show temporal profiles over the pandemic. RESULTS: Between January 21 and October 13, 2020, 23,270 of 241,732,881 tweets (0.01%) met inclusion criteria and were generated by 15,770 accounts. The majority (51.9%) of accounts were from the United States. Seven hundred forty-nine (4.8%) of all users self-reported as anesthesiologists. 33.8% of all tweets included at least one word or phrase preceded by the # symbol (hashtag), which functions as a label to search for all tweets including a specific hashtag, with the most frequently used being #anesthesia. About half (52.2%) of all tweets included at least one hyperlink, most frequently linked to other social media, news organizations, medical organizations, or scientific publications. The majority of tweets (67%) were not retweeted. COVID-19 anesthesia tweet activity started before the pandemic was declared. The trend of daily tweet activity was similar to, and preceded, the US daily death count by about 2 weeks. CONCLUSIONS: The toll of the pandemic has been reflected in the anesthesiology conversation on Twitter, representing 0.01% of all COVID-19 tweets. Daily tweet activity showed how the Twitter community used the platform to learn about important topics impacting anesthesiology practice during a global pandemic. Twitter is a relevant platform through which to communicate about anesthesiology topics, but further research is required to delineate its effectiveness, benefits, and limitations for anesthesiology discussions.

An exploratory analysis of pediatric anesthesia activity on Twitter using the #pedsanes hashtag

“…The increase in social media use among the #pedsanes community mirrors the use of the #regionalanesthesia and #regionalanaesthesia hashtags, especially during conferences and throughout the COVID pandemic 11–14,20 . The adoption of social media such as Twitter is likely inevitable as it has played a significant role in disseminating information and is associated with a higher citation rate among French anesthesia researchers 4–6,8 .…”

“…Further, the extent to which Twitter hashtag activity translates to changes in clinical practice is unknown. While Twitter and other social media sites represent a fast and efficient method to share knowledge and generate discussion, it is essential to remember that these sites may disseminate information that is non‐peer‐reviewed or low‐quality research 11,16,20,22,23 . Our study did not evaluate the target of the disseminated links as this was beyond the scope of this current study.…”

“…The increase in social media use among the #pedsanes community mirrors the use of the #regionalanesthesia and #regionalanaesthesia hashtags, especially during conferences and throughout the COVID pandemic. [11][12][13][14]20 The adoption of social media such as Twitter is likely inevitable as it has played a significant role in disseminating information and is associated with a higher citation rate among French anesthesia researchers. [4][5][6]8 Of interest, our study reports a higher retweet rate of 61.2%, when compared with users of the #anesthesia and #regionalanesthesia/#regionalanaesthesia hashtags who retweeted at lower rates of 33% and 49%, respectively.…”

“…Social media has proven to be an essential source of information dissemination, allowing innovations to be shared before peer‐reviewed publication while increasing research reach compared with scientific journal publication alone 3–8 . It is also an important source of professional networking and, in some instances, has been used as public education, advocacy, and support resource 9–11 . The COVID‐19 pandemic was declared on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization with most countries worldwide having experienced the first wave by June 2020.…”

“…[3][4][5][6][7][8] It is also an important source of professional networking and, in some instances, has been used as public education, advocacy, and support resource. [9][10][11] The COVID-19 pandemic was declared on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization with most countries worldwide having experienced the first wave by June 2020. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is evidence of an increase in active Twitter accounts and online engagement, making the role of social media within the medical field more relevant than ever.…”