Patients' and caregivers' perceptions of bariatric surgery: A France and United States comparative infodemiology study using social media data mining.

Background: People are conversing about bariatric surgery on social media, but little is known about the main themes being discussed. Objective: To analyze discussions regarding bariatric surgery on social media platforms and to establish a cross-cultural comparison of posts geolocated in France and the United States. Methods: Posts were retrieved between January 2015 and April 2021 from general, publicly accessed sites and health-related forums geolocated in both countries. After processing and cleaning the data, posts of patients and caregivers about bariatric surgery were identified using a supervised machine learning algorithm. Results: The analysis dataset contained a total of 10,800 posts from 4,947 web users in France and 51,804 posts from 40,278 web users in the United States. In France, post-operative follow-up (n = 3,251, 30.1% of posts), healthcare pathways (n = 2,171, 20.1% of the posts), and complementary and alternative weight loss therapies (n = 1,652, 15.3% of the posts) were among the most discussed topics. In the United States, the experience with bariatric surgery (n = 11,138, 21.5% of the posts) and the role of physical activity and diet in weight-loss programs before surgery (n = 9,325, 18% of the posts) were among the most discussed topics. Conclusion: Social media analysis provides a valuable toolset for clinicians to help them increase patient-centered care by integrating the patients' and caregivers' needs and concerns into the management of bariatric surgery.

Identifying Profiles and Symptoms of Patients With Long COVID in France: Data Mining Infodemiology Study Based on Social Media.

Background: Long COVID-a condition with persistent symptoms post COVID-19 infection-is the first illness arising from social media. In France, the French hashtag #ApresJ20 described symptoms persisting longer than 20 days after contracting COVID-19. Faced with a lack of recognition from medical and official entities, patients formed communities on social media and described their symptoms as long-lasting, fluctuating, and multisystemic. While many studies on long COVID relied on traditional research methods with lengthy processes, social media offers a foundation for large-scale studies with a fast-flowing outburst of data. Objective: We aimed to identify and analyze Long Haulers' main reported symptoms, symptom co-occurrences, topics of discussion, difficulties encountered, and patient profiles. Methods: Data were extracted based on a list of pertinent keywords from public sites (eg, Twitter) and health-related forums (eg, Doctissimo). Reported symptoms were identified via the MedDRA dictionary, displayed per the volume of posts mentioning them, and aggregated at the user level. Associations were assessed by computing co-occurrences in users' messages, as pairs of preferred terms. Discussion topics were analyzed using the Biterm Topic Modeling; difficulties and unmet needs were explored manually. To identify patient profiles in relation to their symptoms, each preferred term's total was used to create user-level hierarchal clusters. Results: Between January 1, 2020, and August 10, 2021, overall, 15,364 messages were identified as originating from 6494 patients of long COVID or their caregivers. Our analyses revealed 3 major symptom co-occurrences: asthenia-dyspnea (102/289, 35.3%), asthenia-anxiety (65/289, 22.5%), and asthenia-headaches (50/289, 17.3%). The main reported difficulties were symptom management (150/424, 35.4% of messages), psychological impact (64/424,15.1%), significant pain (51/424, 12.0%), deterioration in general well-being (52/424, 12.3%), and impact on daily and professional life (40/424, 9.4% and 34/424, 8.0% of messages, respectively). We identified 3 profiles of patients in relation to their symptoms: profile A (n=406 patients) reported exclusively an asthenia symptom; profile B (n=129) expressed anxiety (n=129, 100%), asthenia (n=28, 21.7%), dyspnea (n=15, 11.6%), and ageusia (n=3, 2.3%); and profile C (n=141) described dyspnea (n=141, 100%), and asthenia (n=45, 31.9%). Approximately 49.1% of users (79/161) continued expressing symptoms after more than 3 months post infection, and 20.5% (33/161) after 1 year. Conclusions: Long COVID is a lingering condition that affects people worldwide, physically and psychologically. It impacts Long Haulers' quality of life, everyday tasks, and professional activities. Social media played an undeniable role in raising and delivering Long Haulers' voices and can potentially rapidly provide large volumes of valuable patient-reported information. Since long COVID was a self-titled condition by patients themselves via social media, it is imperative to continuously include their perspectives in related research. Our results can help design patient-centric instruments to be further used in clinical practice to better capture meaningful dimensions of long COVID.