INTRODUCTION

Spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal that may compress neurological tissues leading to pain and disability. Although previous qualitative studies have attempted to solicit data regarding the life experience of patients with spinal stenosis or their opinions towards non-surgical treatments for spinal stenosis, their data was collected from participants in a controlled setting. Therefore, it remains unclear whether patients’ or caregivers’ concerns/opinions about spinal stenosis would be different in a non-experimental environment. Given that Twitter is a popular online platform for people to share information and interact instantaneously, the analysis of relevant tweets from Twitter may help reveal people’s thoughts and attitudes about spinal stenosis. As such, the current study aimed to identify tweets that were relevant to spinal stenosis on Twitter, and to categorize them into common themes.

METHODS

A social media monitoring and analysis software program (TalkWalker) was used to search relevant tweets using the keywords 'spinal stenosis' and 'stenosis' between 29 May 2019 and 24 June 2020. Two independent reviewers screened and conducted content analysis of the tweets and classified the tweets into different themes.

RESULTS

Three hundred sixty-two out of 510 identified tweets met the selection criteria. Five themes were identified: (1) compromised physical, psychological, and social wellbeing (n=173); (2) diverse treatment options (n=69); (3) coping strategies (n=30); (4) dissemination of scientific information (n=86); and (5) health policy (n=4). Most of the tweets revealed negative impacts of spinal stenosis on patients' physical and psychosocial wellbeing. People with spinal stenosis were eager to share their experiences and sought helps from others on Twitter, while it was not uncommon for clinicians or researchers to disseminate relevant information and research findings on Twitter.

DISCUSSION

This is the first study to reveal the feasibility of using Talkwalker to categorize tweets into themes related to spinal stenosis. The approach not only helps understand people’s concerns about spinal stenosis in an uncontrolled environment, but also can be adopted to monitor influences of diseases or public health education on Twitter users. Collectively, Twitter can be a novel channel for researchers to understand the impact of different diseases on various aspects of patients, conduct research (e.g., online surveys), and disseminate research findings.