Public Health Surveillance of Dental Pain via Twitter

On Twitter, people answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” in no more than 140 characters. We investigated the content of Twitter posts meeting search criteria relating to dental pain. A set of 1000 tweets was randomly selected from 4859 tweets over 7 non-consecutive days. The content w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of dental research Vol. 90; no. 9; pp. 1047 - 1051
Main Authors:	Heaivilin, N., Gerbert, B., Page, J.E., Gibbs, J.L.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-09-2011 International Association for Dental Research SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:	Analgesics Asia - epidemiology Biological and medical sciences Blogging Canada - epidemiology Comorbidity Dental Research Dentistry Dentists Departments Facial bones, jaws, teeth, parodontium: diseases, semeiology Female General populations Health surveillance Humans Information Dissemination - methods Male Medical sciences Non tumoral diseases Otorhinolaryngology. Stomatology Pain Population Surveillance Prevalence Prevention and actions Public health Public health. Hygiene Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine Social networks Toothache - epidemiology Toothache - therapy United Kingdom - epidemiology United States - epidemiology United States North America America Twitter pain odontalgia surveillance social networking toothache Human Stomatology Dental disease Social network Pain Bucco-dental health Tooth Internet Sanitary surveillance Public health
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Summary:	On Twitter, people answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” in no more than 140 characters. We investigated the content of Twitter posts meeting search criteria relating to dental pain. A set of 1000 tweets was randomly selected from 4859 tweets over 7 non-consecutive days. The content was coded using pre-established, non-mutually-exclusive categories, including the experience of dental pain, actions taken or contemplated in response to a toothache, impact on daily life, and advice sought from the Twitter community. After excluding ambiguous tweets, spam, and repeat users, we analyzed 772 tweets and calculated frequencies. Of the sample of 772 tweets, 83% (n = 640) were primarily categorized as a general statement of dental pain, 22% (n = 170) as an action taken or contemplated, and 15% (n = 112) as describing an impact on daily activities. Among the actions taken or contemplated, 44% (n = 74) reported seeing a dentist, 43% (n = 73) took an analgesic or antibiotic medication, and 14% (n = 24) actively sought advice from the Twitter community. Twitter users extensively share health information relating to dental pain, including actions taken to relieve pain and the impact of pain. This new medium may provide an opportunity for dental professionals to disseminate health information.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0022-0345 1544-0591
DOI:	10.1177/0022034511415273