Analysis of Twitter conversations in obstetric anesthesiology using the hashtag #OBAnes during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background#OBAnes is the most used hashtag in obstetric anesthesiology. The primary objective of the study was to characterize #OBAnes tweets at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. MethodsObservational study of all tweets using #OBAnes between June 30, 2019 and October 19, 2020. A list of 19 topics was compiled to categorize each tweet. All Twitter users were manually assigned into one of 19 Symplur Healthcare Stakeholder categories. ResultsThere were 12 431 tweets with #OBAnes during the study period, posted by 1704 unique users. The top user category was Doctor (n = 1211, 71%) with 9665 (78%) tweets. The top three topics identified within Twitter conversations were neuraxial anesthesia, COVID-19, and general anesthesia. ConclusionsTwitter facilitated thousands of obstetric anesthesia-related discussions during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with most conversations centering on anesthesia type (neuraxial or general anesthesia).