The American Society of Plastic Surgeons Conference Hashtag #PSTM17 Dramatically Increased Global Exposure of Academic Plastic Surgery

Introduction:

Social media is a growing communication platform connecting millions of individuals worldwide. Twitter, one of the largest social media enterprises, is a public and easily accessible forum used by both healthcare professionals and non-healthcare professionals in daily communications regarding plastic surgery. We used Plastic Surgery, The Meeting 2017 (PSTM) as a model to analyze tweet demographics, content, and impressions to understand twitter impact on global exposure of plastic surgery.

Methods:

Twitter data for the hashtag #PSTM17, the official designated conference hashtag, and #biaALCL, a specific sub-topic discussed at the conference, was obtained from the Symplur Signals database. These hashtags were used to identify pertinent tweets, analyze content, frequency per conference day, author demographics, and quantify impressions. The most popular tweets were further qualitatively examined.

Results:

Sixty percent of attendees posted tweets during PSTM 2017. During the meeting, there were 5,018 tweets by 1848 unique participants, creating 90 million total impressions. The most popular trending subtopic with the hashtag #PSTM17 was social media itself. Tweet frequency peaked on Day 2 of the conference. Nine of the ten most impressionable tweets using #PSTM17 were made by healthcare professionals, almost equally by private and academic surgeons. Six of the ten tweets relayed information for scientific promotion, while four were social in content. In using the BIA-ALCL panel as a paradigm for information dissemination during the meeting pertaining to a specific topic, the hashtag #biaALCL was analyzed. This hashtag was tweeted 46 times during the meeting, with 23 tweets specifically pertaining to a BIA-ALCL panel, resulting in 581,000 total impressions. Tweets with links to the new BIA-ALCL guidelines resulted in a 230 percent increase in traffic to the guidelines from the nadir in August.

Conclusions:

Nearly two thirds of the 3,071 attendees at Plastic Surgery The Meeting 2017, the most heavily attended plastic surgery meeting in the US, tweeted meeting-related content using #PSTM17 during the five day conference. Twitter plays an instrumental role in communicating meeting-related academic content between healthcare professionals. A single tweet has the potential to reach millions of viewers. The most commonly discussed topic was social media, highlighting the increasing recognition of this topic as vital to plastic surgery academia. #biaALCL tweets showcase a particularly consequential use of tweeting, in which a single tweet correlated with more than doubled traffic to the most up-to-date guidelines regarding BIA-ALCL treatment. By recognizing the importance of social media in promoting academic information, healthcare providers can move to control the dialogue and tap into the wealthy platform Twitter provides for knowledge dissemination and opportunities for collaboration.