01 August 2023

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Social media as an educational tool for oral surgery

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Background

TikTok is the fastest growing social media application (SMA) to date and has become a major source of information for medicine. The rising use of media platforms by patients and practitioners alike plays a significant role in the perception of healthcare.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify the presence and popularity of oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) content on the SMA, to measure whether the information shared is useful for viewers, and whether there are differences in quality of the videos between video content producer groups.

Study design, setting, sample

A cross-sectional study was used to evaluate OMS content on the SMA. Included videos were published during a 3-month period (11/16/2021 - 2/17/2022) and mentioned “oral surgery” or “wisdom teeth” in the video description, title, or hashtag.

Independent variable

The independent variable was video content producer – content created by health professionals versus laypersons.

Main outcome variable

Quality of each video was determined by the information in the video and its usefulness, using the Global Quality Scale (GQS) criteria.

Covariates

Topic was categorized as educational or anecdotal. Popularity was measured by the number of likes accumulated.

Analyses

Statistical analysis was performed using two sample t-tests. Statistical significance was achieved with a P-value < 0.05 with 95% CI.

Results

Out of 558 videos searched, 426 videos met study criteria. GQS score was greater in health professional videos (MHP=3.30) versus layperson videos (ML=2.05) (P < 0.05). Most video content producers were laypersons (69%) and videos were mostly anecdotal (87%). Health professional videos had greater popularity than layperson videos (P < 0.05). Health professionals and laypersons averaged 25,148 likes and 2,109 likes, respectively. All videos combined totaled 3,939,685 likes.

Conclusion

By analyzing GQS and the popularity of videos, we found that health professionals produced higher quality videos and had a greater number of likes. With 39% of videos by health professionals being educational, it shows that we are utilizing the SMA to instruct patients. However, there is still room to produce more educational rather than anecdotal videos with the goal to provide accurate information to patients.

Miracle Vania Firmalino,  Sanjeeth George and Thomas Schlieve. "Social Media Application as an Educational Tool for Viewers Searching 'Oral Surgery'." Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. 26 July 2023. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joms.2023.07.138.