From the Department of Pathology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Dr Lepe); the Department of Pathology, Meram Faculty of Medicine, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey (Dr Oltulu); the Department of Pathology, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence (Dr Canepa); the Department of Clinical Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia (Dr Wu); the Department of Pathology, Summa Health Systems, Akron, Ohio (Drs Deeken and Jelinek); the Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York (Drs Alex and Sauter); Patologia, Vall d'Hebron Hospital, Barcelona, Spain (Drs Dinares and Sansano); the Department of Pathology, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio (Drs Doxtader and Mukhopadhyay); the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School, Newark (Dr Fitzhugh); Centre de Biologie, University of Lille, Lille, France (Dr Gibier); the Department of Pathology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India (Dr Jain); the Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (Drs Janaki and Michael); Patologia, Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra, Navarra, Spain (Drs Labiano and Panizo); the Department of Pathology, University of Milano Biocca, Monza, Italy (Dr L'Imperio and Pagni); Patologia, Hospital del Mar, Barcelona, Spain (Drs Pijuan and Sanchez-Font); the Department of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts (Dr Quintana); the Department of Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston (Dr Roy-Chowdhuri); the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston (Drs Skipper and Spruill); the Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (Dr Torous); the Department of Pathology, Dermatopathology, Bone & Soft Tissue, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock (Dr Gardner); and the Department of Pathology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina (Dr Jiang).
Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2020 Jul 1;144(7):878-882. doi: 10.5858/arpa.2019-0297-OA.
CONTEXT.—: Social media sites are increasingly used for education, networking, and rapid dissemination of medical information, but their utility for facilitating research has remained largely untapped.
OBJECTIVE.—: To describe in detail our experience using a social media platform (Twitter) for the successful initiation, coordination, and completion of an international, multi-institution pathology research study.
DESIGN.—: Following a tweet describing a hitherto-unreported biopsy-related histologic finding in a mediastinal lymph node following endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration, a tweet was posted to invite pathologists to participate in a validation study. Twitter's direct messaging feature was used to create a group to facilitate communication among participating pathologists. Contributing pathologists reviewed consecutive cases of mediastinal lymph node resection following endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration and examined them specifically for biopsy site changes. Data spreadsheets containing deidentified data and digital photomicrographs of suspected biopsy site changes were submitted via an online file hosting service for central review by 5 pathologists from different institutions.
RESULTS.—: A total of 24 pathologists from 14 institutions in 5 countries participated in the study within 143 days of study conception, and a total of 297 cases were collected and analyzed. The time interval between study conception and acceptance of the manuscript for publication was 346 days.
CONCLUSIONS.—: To our knowledge, this is the first time that a social media platform has been used to generate a research idea based on a tweet, recruit coinvestigators publicly, communicate with collaborating pathologists, and successfully complete a pathology study.
社交媒体网站越来越多地被用于教育、社交和快速传播医学信息，但它们在促进研究方面的实用性在很大程度上尚未得到开发。
详细描述我们使用社交媒体平台（Twitter）成功发起、协调和完成一项国际多机构病理学研究的经验。
在一条推文描述了支气管内超声引导经支气管针吸活检后纵隔淋巴结活检相关组织学发现的首例报告后，我们发布了一条推文，邀请病理学家参与验证研究。我们使用 Twitter 的直接消息功能创建了一个群组，以促进参与病理学家之间的交流。有贡献的病理学家回顾了支气管内超声引导经支气管针吸活检后纵隔淋巴结切除的连续病例，并专门检查了活检部位的变化。包含匿名数据的电子数据表和疑似活检部位变化的数字显微照片通过在线文件托管服务提交，供来自不同机构的 5 名病理学家进行集中审查。
在研究构想提出后的 143 天内，来自 5 个国家的 14 个机构的 24 名病理学家参与了这项研究，共收集和分析了 297 例病例。从研究构想到接受发表的手稿的时间间隔为 346 天。
据我们所知，这是第一次使用社交媒体平台根据推文提出研究想法，公开招募共同研究者，与合作病理学家交流，并成功完成病理学研究。
