Dissemination of Anesthesia Information During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic Through Twitter: An Infodemiology Study

This infodemiology study examined 23,270 anesthesiology-related posts drawn from a public dataset of more than 241 million COVID-19 tweets published between January 21 and October 13, 2020. The posts were generated by 15,770 accounts, including 749 users who identified as anesthesiologists. About one-third used hashtags and just over half included hyperlinks, most often to social media, news, medical organizations, or scientific publications. Daily anesthesia-related activity began before the pandemic declaration and preceded the United States daily death trend by roughly two weeks. The findings demonstrate Twitter’s relevance for communicating about anesthesiology while highlighting the need for further evaluation of its benefits and limitations.

Anesthesia & Analgesia, 133(2), 515–525