Al-Khalifa Khalifa S, AlSheikh Rasha, Alsahafi Yaser A, Alkhalifa Atheer, Sadaf Shazia, Al-Moumen Saud A, Muazen Yasmeen Y, Shetty Ashwin C
Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Restorative Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Risk Manag Healthc Policy. 2021 May 24;14:2153-2162. doi: 10.2147/RMHP.S310023. eCollection 2021.
Twitter is a powerful platform which could be used to reflect on the demand and supply of dental services during a pandemic. The aim of this study was to examine the nature and dissemination of COVID-19 information related to dentistry on Twitter platform Arabic database during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One hundred and fifty independent searches with a combination of keywords for both COVID-19 and dentistry from a preselected Arabic keyword were carried out for the period from the 2nd of March (first confirmed cases of COVID-19) to the 6th of July 2020. Tweets were filtered to remove duplicate and unrelated tweets. The suitable tweets were 1,150. After calibration, two examiners coded the tweets following two main themes: COVID-19 and oral health-related information. Tweets were then compared with COVID-19 daily events in the Arab countries as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Descriptive analysis was performed to present the overview of the findings using Microsoft Excel.
The most retweeted information was the help with urgent consultation or emergency dental treatment during COVID-19 tweeted by a dentist. There were 673 retweets and 1,116 likes of this tweet. The most common tweets related to oral health were needs of dental treatment (n=462, 39.5%) of which, toothaches or wisdom tooth problems constituted 48% of the related tweets.
Based on the results of this study, it is obvious that social media users reacted to the COVID-19 threat to dental practices. Twitter as one of the social media platforms served as a connection between dental health professionals and patients.
推特是一个强大的平台，可用于反映大流行期间牙科服务的供需情况。本研究的目的是调查在新冠疫情期间，推特阿拉伯语数据库上与牙科相关的新冠疫情信息的性质和传播情况。
从2020年3月2日（首例新冠确诊病例）至7月6日，使用预先选定的阿拉伯语关键词，结合新冠疫情和牙科的关键词进行了150次独立搜索。推文经过筛选，以去除重复和不相关的推文。合适的推文有1150条。校准后，两名审查员按照两个主要主题对推文进行编码：新冠疫情和口腔健康相关信息。然后将推文与世界卫生组织（WHO）报告的阿拉伯国家的新冠疫情每日事件进行比较。使用Microsoft Excel进行描述性分析，以呈现研究结果的概述。
被转发最多的信息是一名牙医发布的关于在新冠疫情期间提供紧急咨询或紧急牙科治疗帮助的推文。这条推文有673次转发和1116个赞。与口腔健康最相关的推文是牙科治疗需求（n = 462，39.5%），其中牙痛或智齿问题占相关推文的48%。
基于本研究结果，很明显社交媒体用户对新冠疫情对牙科业务的威胁做出了反应。推特作为社交媒体平台之一，成为了牙科健康专业人员和患者之间的纽带。
