The influence of social media on recruitment to surgical trials

Autor: Carly Nichola Bisset, Ben Carter, Jennifer Law, Jonathan Hewitt, Kat Parmar, Susan Joan Moug, on behalf of the ELF Study Group Collaborative Authorship
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: BMC Medical Research Methodology, Vol 20, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2020)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1471-2288
DOI: 10.1186/s12874-020-01072-1
Popis: Abstract Background Social media has changed the way surgeons communicate worldwide, particularly in dissemination of trial results. However, it is unclear if social media could be used in recruitment to surgical trials. This study aimed to investigate the influence of Twitter in promoting surgical recruitment in The Emergency Laparotomy and Frailty (ELF) Study. Methods The ELF Study was a UK-based, prospective, observational cohort that aimed to assess the influence of frailty on 90-day mortality in older adults undergoing emergency surgery. A power calculation required 500 patients to be recruited to detect a 10% change in mortality associated with frailty. A 12-week recruitment period was selected, calculated from information submitted by participating hospitals and the numbers of emergency surgeries performed in adults aged > 65 years. A Twitter handle was designed (@ELFStudy) with eye-catching logos to encourage enrolment and inform the public and clinicians involved in the study. Twitter Analytics and Twitonomy (Digonomy Pty Ltd) were used to analyse user engagement in relation to patient recruitment. Results After 90 days of data collection, 49 sites from Scotland, England and Wales recruited 952 consecutive patients undergoing emergency laparotomy, with data logged into a database created on REDCap. Target recruitment (n = 500) was achieved by week 11. A total of 591 tweets were published by @ELFStudy since its conception, making 218,136 impressions at time of writing. The number of impressions (number of times users see a particular tweet) prior to March 20th 2017 (study commencement date) was 23,335 (343.2 per tweet), compared to the recruitment period with 114,314 impressions (256.3 per tweet), ending June 20th 2017. Each additional tweet was associated with an increase in recruitment of 1.66 (95%CI 1.36 to 1.97; p
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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