Twitter and brachytherapy: An analysis of "tweets" over six years by patients and health care professionals.

PURPOSE: Twitter may reflect attitudes underrepresented in traditional surveys. This study aimed to understand professionals' and patients' thoughts regarding brachytherapy on Twitter. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Twitter was queried with "brachytherapy" to identify all tweets about patients' experiences from January 2012 to May 2017. A random sample of tweets by health care professionals containing "brachytherapy" was obtained using the first weekly tweet in the same interval. Consensus coding was used to categorize tweets as "patient" or "professional" based on content about receiving brachytherapy or self-identification as a health care professional. Tweets were analyzed for positive, neutral, or negative sentiment and recurrent themes using manual, iterative coding. Patient tweets were analyzed for whether they were shared before or after treatment and whether the patient, friends, or family had posted them. Professional tweets were analyzed to identify temporal theme changes. RESULTS: One hundred sixty-two patient tweets and 260 professional tweets were obtained from January 2012 to May 2017. On average, 2.5 patient tweets were shared monthly compared to 69 for providers. Among tweets by patients and professionals, 57% vs. 12% expressed positive sentiment, 21% vs. 3% negative sentiment, and 22% vs. 85% neutral sentiment, respectively. The most common patient and professional codes were "general sharing of experience/casual conversation" (32%) and "science" (21%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Patients tweeted less about brachytherapy than professionals and generally expressed favorable and negative sentiments regarding their radiation treatment experiences. Professionals tended to express neutral sentiment and focus on research. Opportunities exist for greater radiation oncologist engagement in this medium.

Digital Footprint of Neurological Surgeons.

BACKGROUND: Patients are increasingly turning to online resources to inquire about individual physicians and to gather health information. However, little research exists studying the online presence of neurosurgeons across the country. This study aimed to characterize these online profiles and assess the scope of neurosurgeons' digital identities. METHODS: Medicare-participating neurologic surgeons from the United States and Puerto Rico were identified using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Physician Comparable Downloadable File. Each physician was characterized by his or her medical education, graduation year, city of practice, gender, and affiliation with an academic institution. Using a Google-based custom search tool, the top 10 search results for each physician were extracted and categorized as 1 of the following: 1) physician, hospital, or healthcare system controlled, 2) third-party or government controlled, 3) social media-based, 4) primary journal article, or 5) other. RESULTS: Among the physicians within the CMS database, 4751 self-identified as being neurosurgeons, yielding a total of 45,875 uniform resource locator search results pertinent to these physicians. Of the 4751 neurosurgeons, 2317 (48.8%) and 2434 (51.2%) were classified as academic and nonacademic neurosurgeons, respectively. At least 1 search result was obtained for every physician. Hospital, healthcare system, or physician-controlled websites (18,206; 39.7%) and third-party websites (17,122; 37.3%) were the 2 most commonly observed domain types. Websites belonging to social media platforms accounted for 4843 (10.6%) search results, and websites belonging to peer-reviewed academic journals accounted for 1888 (4.1%) search results. The frequency with which a third-party domain appeared as the first search result was higher for nonacademic neurosurgeons than for academic neurosurgeons. CONCLUSIONS: In general, neurosurgeons lacked a controllable online presence within their first page of Google Search results. Third-party physician rating websites constituted about half of the search results, and a relative lack of social media websites was apparent. Still, numerous opportunities exist for neurosurgeons to address this disparity.

Descriptive Analysis of State and Federal Spine Surgery Malpractice Litigation in the United States.

STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective review. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the factors associated with malpractice litigation in cases involving spine surgery in the United States. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Medical malpractice is of substantial interest to the medical community due to concerns of increased health care costs and medical decision-making for the sole purpose of reducing legal liability. METHODS: The Westlaw online legal database (Thomson Reuters, New York, NY) was searched for verdict and settlement reports pertaining to spine surgery from 2010 to 2015. Data were collected regarding type of procedure, patient age and gender, defendant specialty, outcome, award, alleged cause of malpractice, and factors involved in the plaintiff's decision to file. Initial search queried 187 cases, after which exclusion criteria were applied to eliminate duplicates and cases unrelated to spine surgery, yielding a total of 98 cases for analysis. RESULTS: The verdict was in favor of the defendant in 62 cases (63.3%). Neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons were the most common defendants in 29 (17.3%) and 40 (23.8%) of the cases, respectively. A perceived lack of informed consent was noted as a factor in 24 (24.4%) of the cases. A failure to diagnose or a failure to treat was noted in 31 (31.6%) and 32 (32.7%) cases, respectively. Median payments for plaintiff verdicts were nearly double those of settlements ($2,525,000 vs. $1,300,000). A greater incidence of plaintiff verdicts was noted in cases in which a failure to treat (P < 0.05) was cited, a patient death occurred (P < 0.05), or an emergent surgery had been performed (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Overall, physicians were not found liable in the majority of spine surgery malpractice cases queried. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 4.

Reputation Management and Content Control: An Analysis of Radiation Oncologists' Digital Identities.

INTRODUCTION: Google is the most popular search engine in the United States, and patients are increasingly relying on online webpages to seek information about individual physicians. This study aims to characterize what patients find when they search for radiation oncologists online. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Physician Comparable Downloadable File was used to identify all Medicare-participating radiation oncologists in the United States and Puerto Rico. Each radiation oncologist was characterized by medical school education, year of graduation, city of practice, gender, and affiliation with an academic institution. Using a custom Google-based search engine, up to the top 10 search results for each physician were extracted and categorized as relating to: (1) physician, hospital, or health care system; (2) third-party; (3) social media; (4) academic journal articles; or (5) other. RESULTS: Among all health care providers in the United States within CMS, 4443 self-identified as being radiation oncologists and yielded 40,764 search results. Of those, 1161 (26.1%) and 3282 (73.9%) were classified as academic and nonacademic radiation oncologists, respectively. At least 1 search result was obtained for 4398 physicians (99.0%). Physician, hospital, and health care-controlled websites (16,006; 39.3%) and third-party websites (10,494; 25.7%) were the 2 most often observed domain types. Social media platforms accounted for 2729 (6.7%) hits, and peer-reviewed academic journal websites accounted for 1397 (3.4%) results. About 6.8% and 6.7% of the top 10 links were social media websites for academic and nonacademic radiation oncologists, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Most radiation oncologists lack self-controlled online content when patients search within the first page of Google search results. With the strong presence of third-party websites and lack of social media, opportunities exist for radiation oncologists to increase their online presence to improve patient-provider communication and better the image of the overall field. We discuss strategies to improve online visibility.