Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Childs Nerv Syst. 2023 Dec;39(12):3483-3490. doi: 10.1007/s00381-023-06019-7. Epub 2023 Jun 24.
There is little data on patient and caregiver perceptions of spine surgery in children and youth. This study aims to characterize the personal experiences of patients, caregivers, and family members surrounding pediatric spine surgery through a qualitative and quantitative social media analysis.
The Twitter application programming interface was searched for keywords related to pediatric spine surgery from inception to March 2022. Relevant tweets and accounts were extracted and subsequently classified using thematic labels. Tweet metadata was collected to measure user engagement via multivariable regression. Sentiment analysis using Natural Language Processing was performed on all tweets with a focus on tweets discussing the personal experiences of patients and caregivers.
2424 tweets from 1847 individual accounts were retrieved for analysis. Patients and caregivers represented 1459 (79.0%) of all accounts. Posts discussed the personal experiences of patients and caregivers in 83.5% of tweets. Pediatric spine surgery research was discussed in few posts (n=90, 3.7%). Within the personal experience category, 975 (48.17%) tweets were positive, 516 (25.49%) were negative, and 533 (26.34%) were neutral. Presence of a tag (beta: -6.1, 95% CI -9.7 to -2.5) and baseline follower count (beta<0.001, 95% CI <0.001 to <0.001) significantly affected tweet engagement negatively and positively, respectively.
Patients and caregivers actively discuss topics related to pediatric spine surgery on Twitter. Posts discussing personal experience are most prevalent, while posts on research are scarce, unlike previous social media studies. Pediatric spine surgeons can leverage this dialogue to better understand the worries and needs of patients and their families.
关于儿童和青少年脊柱手术患者和照护者的看法，相关数据较少。本研究旨在通过定性和定量的社交媒体分析，描述围绕儿科脊柱手术的患者、照护者和家庭成员的个人经历。
从创建到 2022 年 3 月，通过 Twitter 应用程序接口搜索与儿科脊柱手术相关的关键字。提取相关推文和账户，并使用主题标签进行分类。通过多变量回归收集推文元数据以衡量用户参与度。使用自然语言处理对所有推文进行情感分析，重点分析讨论患者和照护者个人经历的推文。
共检索到 2424 条推文，来自 1847 个独立账户，用于分析。患者和照护者占所有账户的 1459 个（79.0%）。83.5%的帖子讨论了患者和照护者的个人经历。在个人经历类别中，975 条（48.17%）推文为正面，516 条（25.49%）为负面，533 条（26.34%）为中性。标签的存在（β：-6.1，95%CI：-9.7 至-2.5）和基线关注者数量（β<0.001，95%CI：<0.001 至<0.001）显著负向和正向影响推文参与度。
患者和照护者在 Twitter 上积极讨论与儿科脊柱手术相关的话题。讨论个人经历的帖子最为常见，而关于研究的帖子则很少，这与之前的社交媒体研究不同。儿科脊柱外科医生可以利用这种对话，更好地了解患者及其家属的担忧和需求。
