ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Understanding patient perspective is a key factor in improving treatment satisfaction. The aim of the present study is to qualitatively describe the content of Twitter posts related to the treatment with Invisalign in order to get a better understanding of patient experience. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Tweets were prospectively collected during a period of four weeks from public available posts on Twitter using Awario™ a bespoke social media monitoring tool. After applying the pertinent inclusion and exclusion criteria the selected posts were analysed by three investigators using thematic analysis. Specific themes and subthemes were developed. RESULTS: A total of 1564 tweets were analysed; three mayor themes were identified: Pre-treatment related, Treatment related and Patient/clinician relationship. Pre-treatment posts were mainly positive and underlined patients' expectations, while in the treatment phase an almost equal number of positive and negative posts were found. The positive post were about the satisfaction with treatment and the improvement of self-esteem. The negative ones were related to pain, compliance, the impact on diet and pronunciation. CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides a better understanding of patients' experience during clear aligners treatment. Increasing the awareness of the clinicians can improve their ability to face problems related to the orthodontic treatment and to provide to their patients better professional advices and counselling. Key words:Social media, twitter, clear aligners, Invisalign, orthodontics.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: To describe the impact of research, beyond the limits of the academic environment, Altmetric, a new social and traditional media metric was proposed. The aims of this study were to analyze the online activity related to orthodontic research via Altmetric and to assess if a correlation exists among citations, Mendeley reader count, and the AAS (Altmetric Attention Score). METHOD: The Dimensions App was searched for articles published in the orthodontic journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) throughout the years 2014 to 2018. The articles with a positive AAS were collected and screened for data related to publication and authorship. The articles with an AAS higher than 5 were screened for research topic and study design. Citation counts were harvested from Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus. RESULTS: The best performing journals were Progress in Orthodontics and the European Journal of Orthodontics with a mean AAS per published item of 1.455 and 1.351, respectively and the most prevalent sources were Tweets and Facebook mentions. The most prevalent topic was Oral Health-Related Quality of Life (OHRQOL) and the study design was systematic reviews. The correlation between the AAS and the citations in both WOS and Scopus was poor (r = 0.1463 and r = 0.1508, p < .05). The correlation between citations count and Mendeley reader (r = 0.6879 and r = 0.697, p < .05) was moderate. CONCLUSIONS: Few journals displayed a high level of web activity. Journals and editors should enhance online dissemination of the scientific outputs. The authors should report the impact of the findings to the general public in a convenient way to facilitate online dissemination but to avoid an opportunistic use of the research outputs. Despite the lack of correlation, a combination of the citation count and the AAS can give a more comprehensive assessment of research impact.
