Multiple studies have shown how valuable Twitter hashtags can be for promoting content related to different themes in the online community. This arena has grown into a rich data source for public ...health observation and understanding key trends in healthcare on a global scale. In the field of mental health in particular, it would be of benefit to understand and report the key stakeholders' (individual mental health professionals, academic organizations and their countries) trends and patterns of psychiatric knowledge and information dissemination using #PsychTwitter.
In this study, we aim to evaluate the achieved outreach of psychiatry-related tweets using the hashtag #PsychTwitter.
We utilized the Symplur Signals research analytics tool to characterize tweets containing #PsychTwitter from the 20th of August, 2019, to the 20th of August, 2022.
The #PsychTwitter movement resulted in 125,297 tweets that were shared by 40,058 Twitter users and generated a total of 492,565,230 impressions (views). The three largest identified groups of contributors were Doctors (13.8% of all tweets), Org. Advocacy (6.2% of all tweets), and Researcher/Academic (4% of all tweets) stakeholders. The top influential accounts consisted of 55 psychiatrists and 16 institutional or organizational accounts. The top 5 countries from where most of the tweets containing #PsychTwitter were shared include the United States (54.3% of all users), the United Kingdom (10.4% of all users), Canada (4.9% of all users), India (2% of all users), and Australia (1.8% of all users).
This is the first of its kind study featuring the influence and usage of #PsychTwitter and covering its global impact in the field of psychiatry using the Twitter platform. Our results indicate that Twitter represents a broadly used platform for mental health-related discussions.
With the spread of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the world has been experiencing an extraordinary state of emergency. As patients entering a doctor's practice can potentially infect medical ...staff and other patients, using digital alternatives wherever possible is a potential solution to avoiding face-to-face encounters. In these conditions, telemedicine is becoming increasingly relevant. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine telemedicine use and gathered experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria.
In June 2020, a representative group of Austrian respondents (
= 1000) was asked via online survey whether they had contacted a doctor during spring of 2020, and, if so, whether they had used a telemedical method to do so. The survey also reflected gathered experiences and degrees of satisfaction with the use of telemedicine.
A third (33%) of those who contacted a doctor during the target period did so using telemedical tools. The majority of those with previous telehealth experience were satisfied with the help they received. Patients commonly used a telephone to contact their doctors. The overall assessment of telemedical aids tended to be positive, with more than half (53%) of those surveyed seeing significant advantages, and a 90% satisfaction rate among the respondents who used telehealth services.
The outcomes from this work hint at fairly high acceptance of telemedical communication tools in the studied group of the Austrian population. Based on the high rate of satisfaction among patients who used telehealth, it is expected that the use of telehealth services will increase further in the near future.
On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Committee declared the rapid worldwide spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) a global health emergency. By December 2020, ...the safety and efficacy of the first COVID-19 vaccines had been demonstrated. However, international vaccination coverage rates have remained below expectations (in Europe, at manuscript submission). Mandatory vaccination is currently being controversially discussed and has already been introduced in some countries (Austria, Greece, Italy). We used the Twitter survey system as a viable method to quickly and comprehensively gather international public health insights on mandatory vaccination against COVID-19.
The purpose of this study was to better understand the public's perception of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in real-time utilizing Twitter polls.
Two Twitter polls were developed (in the English language) to seek the public's opinion on the possibility of mandatory vaccination. The polls were pinned to the Digital Health and Patient Safety Platform's (based in Vienna, Austria) Twitter timeline for one week in mid-November 2021, three days after the official public announcement of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in Austria. Twitter users were asked to participate and retweet the polls to reach the largest possible audience.
Our Twitter polls revealed two extremes on the topic of mandatory vaccination against COVID-19. Almost half of the respondents (49% 1,246/2,545) favor mandatory vaccination, at least in certain areas. This attitude contrasts with the 45.7% (1,162/2,545) who categorically reject mandatory vaccination. 26.3% (621/2,365) of participating Twitter users said they would never get vaccinated, reflected by the current Western European and North American vaccination coverage rate. Concatenating interpretation of these two polls should be done cautiously as participating populations might significantly differ.
Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 (in at least certain areas) is favored by less than 50%, whereas it is opposed by almost half of the surveyed Twitter users. Since (social) media strongly influences public perceptions and views and social media discussions and surveys are specifically susceptible to the "echo chamber effect", the results should be interpreted as a momentary snapshot. Therefore, the results of this study need to be complemented by long-term surveys to maintain their validity.
Background
Crowdsourcing is a low-cost, adaptable, and innovative method to collect ideas from numerous contributors with diverse backgrounds. Crowdsourcing from social media like Twitter can be used ...for generating ideas in a noticeably brief time based on contributions from globally distributed users. The world has been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic in the last several years. Measures to combat the pandemic continue to evolve worldwide, and ideas and opinions on optimal counteraction strategies are of high interest.
Objective
This study aimed to validate the use of Twitter as a crowdsourcing platform in order to gain an understanding of public opinion on what measures can help to end the COVID-19 pandemic faster.
Methods
This cross-sectional study was conducted during the period from December 22, 2021, to February 4, 2022. Tweets were posted by accounts operated by the authors, asking “How to faster end the COVID-19 pandemic?” and encouraging the viewers to comment on measures that they perceive would be effective to achieve this goal. The ideas from the users' comments were collected and categorized into two major themes – personal and institutional measures. In the final stage of the campaign, a Twitter poll was conducted to get additional comments and to estimate which of the two groups of measures were perceived to be important amongst Twitter users.
Results
The crowdsourcing campaign generated seventeen suggested measures categorized into two major themes (personal and institutional) that received a total of 1,727 endorsements (supporting comments, retweets, and likes). The poll received a total of 325 votes with 58% of votes underscoring the importance of both personal and institutional measures, 20% favoring personal measures, 11% favoring institutional measures, and 11% of the votes given just out of curiosity to see the vote results.
Conclusions
Twitter was utilized successfully for crowdsourcing ideas on strategies how to end the COVID-19 pandemic faster. The results indicate that the Twitter community highly values the significance of both personal responsibility and institutional measures to counteract the pandemic. This study validates the use of Twitter as a primary tool that could be used for crowdsourcing ideas with healthcare significance.
Abstract
Background:
This study was designed to examine the spread of local anesthetic (LA) via magnetic resonance imaging after a standardized ultrasound-guided thoracic paravertebral blockade.
...Methods:
Ten volunteers were enrolled in the study. We performed ultrasound-guided single-shot paravertebral blocks with 20 ml mepivacaine 1% at the thoracic six level at both sides on two consecutive days. After each paravertebral blockade, a magnetic resonance imaging investigation was performed to investigate the three-dimensional spread of the LA. In addition, sensory spread of blockade was evaluated via pinprick testing.
Results:
The median (interquartile range) cranial and caudal distribution of the LA relative to the thoracic six puncture level was 1.0 (2.5) and 3.0 (0.75) =4.0 vertebral levels for the left and 0.5 (1.0) and 3.0 (0.75) =3.5 vertebral levels for the right side. Accordingly, the LA distributed more caudally than cranially. The median (interquartile range) number of sensory dermatomes which were affected by the thoracic paravertebral blockade was 9.8 (6.5) for the left and 10.7 (8.8) for the right side. The sensory distribution of thoracic paravertebral blockade was significantly larger compared with the spread of LA.
Conclusions:
Although the spread of LA was reproducible, the anesthetic effect was unpredictable, even with a standardized ultrasound-guided technique in volunteers. While it can be assumed that approximately 4 vertebral levels are covered by 20 ml LA, the somatic distribution of the thoracic paravertebral blockade remains unpredictable. In a significant percentage, the LA distributes into the epidural space, prevertebral, or to the contralateral side.
Summary
Abdominal wall blocks are an effective regional anesthetic technique to provide sufficient analgesia in abdominal surgery. This article reviews the use of abdominal wall blocks in pediatric ...regional anesthesia.
On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization's Emergency Committee declared the rapid, worldwide spread of COVID-19 a global health emergency. Since then, tireless efforts have been made to ...mitigate the spread of the disease and its impact, and these efforts have mostly relied on nonpharmaceutical interventions. By December 2020, the safety and efficacy of the first COVID-19 vaccines were demonstrated. The large social media platform Twitter has been used by medical researchers for the analysis of important public health topics, such as the public's perception on antibiotic use and misuse and human papillomavirus vaccination. The analysis of Twitter-generated data can be further facilitated by using Twitter's built-in, anonymous polling tool to gain insight into public health issues and obtain rapid feedback on an international scale. During the fast-paced course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Twitter polling system has provided a viable method for gaining rapid, large-scale, international public health insights on highly relevant and timely SARS-CoV-2-related topics.
The purpose of this study was to understand the public's perception on the safety and acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines in real time by using Twitter polls.
We developed 2 Twitter polls to explore the public's views on available COVID-19 vaccines. The surveys were pinned to the Digital Health and Patient Safety Platform Twitter timeline for 1 week in mid-February 2021, and Twitter users and influencers were asked to participate in and retweet the polls to reach the largest possible audience.
The adequacy of COVID-19 vaccine safety (ie, the safety of currently available vaccines; poll 1) was agreed upon by 1579 out of 3439 (45.9%) Twitter users. In contrast, almost as many Twitter users (1434/3439, 41.7%) were unsure about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. Only 5.2% (179/3439) of Twitter users rated the available COVID-19 vaccines as generally unsafe. Poll 2, which addressed the question of whether users would undergo vaccination, was answered affirmatively by 82.8% (2862/3457) of Twitter users, and only 8% (277/3457) categorically rejected vaccination at the time of polling.
In contrast to the perceived high level of uncertainty about the safety of the available COVID-19 vaccines, we observed an elevated willingness to undergo vaccination among our study sample. Since people's perceptions and views are strongly influenced by social media, the snapshots provided by these media platforms represent a static image of a moving target. Thus, the results of this study need to be followed up by long-term surveys to maintain their validity. This is especially relevant due to the circumstances of the fast-paced pandemic and the need to not miss sudden rises in the incidence of vaccine hesitancy, which may have detrimental effects on the pandemic's course.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
To analyze the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with cancer in hospital care after implementation of institutional and governmental safety measurements.
Patients with cancer routinely ...tested for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by nasal swab and real-time polymerase chain reaction between March 21 and May 4, 2020, were included. The results of this cancer cohort were statistically compared with the SARS-CoV-2 prevalence in the Austrian population as determined by a representative nationwide random sample study (control cohort 1) and a cohort of patients without cancer presenting to our hospital (control cohort 2).
A total of 1,688 SARS-CoV-2 tests in 1,016 consecutive patients with cancer were performed. A total of 270 of 1,016 (26.6%) of the patients were undergoing active anticancer treatment in a neoadjuvant/adjuvant and 560 of 1,016 (55.1%) in a palliative setting. A total of 53 of 1,016 (5.2%) patients self-reported symptoms potentially associated with COVID-19. In 4 of 1,016 (0.4%) patients, SARS-CoV-2 was detected. At the time of testing at our department, all four SARS-CoV-2-positive patients were asymptomatic, and two of them had recovered from symptomatic COVID-19. Viral clearance was achieved in three of the four patients 14-56 days after testing positive. The estimated odds ratio of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence between the cancer cohort and control cohort 1 was 1.013 (95% CI, 0.209 to 4.272;
= 1), and between control cohort 2 and the cancer cohort it was 18.333 (95% CI, 6.056 to 74.157).
Our data indicate that continuation of active anticancer therapy and follow-up visits in a large tertiary care hospital are feasible and safe after implementation of strict population-wide and institutional safety measures during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Routine SARS-CoV-2 testing of patients with cancer seems advisable to detect asymptomatic virus carriers and avoid uncontrolled viral spread.
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