Top 100 Urology Influencers on Twitter: Is Social Media Influence Associated with Academic Impact?

Abstract

BackgroundSocial media use in medicine has exploded, with uptake by most physicians and patients. There is a risk of dissemination of inaccurate information about urological conditions on social media. Physicians, as key opinion leaders, must play a role in sharing evidence-based information through social media. ObjectiveTo identify and describe the top 100 urology influencers on the Twitter social media platform and to correlate Twitter influence with academic impact in urology. Design, setting, and participantsTwitter influence scores for the search topic “urology” were collected in April 2022 using published methodology. The top 100 personal accounts with the highest computed scores were linked to individuals’ names, all-time h index, geographic location, specialty, attributed sex, and board certification status in this cross-sectional study. Outcome measurements and statistical analysisWe examined the correlation between influence rank and h index. Results and limitationsOf the top 100 Twitter influencers on the topic of urology, the majority are from the USA (64%), male (85%), and practicing urologists (91%). Some 93% of US urology influencers are board-certified. Only 22 of the 50 US states are represented. The second most frequent country is the UK, with ten urology influencers. The median all-time h index is 42 (interquartile range 28.25–58). There is a weak positive correlation between influence rank and h index (r = 0.23; p = 0.02). Limitations of the study include the inability to validate the accuracy of the proprietary ranking algorithm and investigation of just one social media platform. ConclusionsThe top Twitter influencers in urology are mostly board-certified US urologists. Collectively, influencers have a relatively greater academic impact in comparison to the average urologist, although there is a weak positive correlation between Twitter influence and h index among top Twitter influencers. Patient summaryGiven the explosion of medical information on Twitter, we report the personal accounts with the greatest impact for the topic of “urology”. We found that most urology influencers on Twitter are US board-certified urologists with a strong research history.