Public health surveillance of dental pain via Twitter.

摘要: On Twitter, people answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” in no more than 140 characters. We investigated content of Twitter posts meeting search criteria relating to dental pain. A set 1000 tweets was randomly selected from 4859 over 7 non-consecutive days. The coded using pre-established, non-mutually-exclusive categories, including experience pain, actions taken or contemplated response a toothache, impact on daily life, and advice sought community. After excluding ambiguous tweets, spam, repeat users, we analyzed 772 calculated frequencies. Of sample 83% (n = 640) were primarily categorized as general statement 22% 170) an action contemplated, 15% 112) describing activities. Among 44% 74) reported seeing dentist, 43% 73) took analgesic antibiotic medication, 14% 24) actively users extensively share health information relieve pain This new medium may provide opportunity for professionals disseminate information.