Background: Social media advertising has become increasingly influential in recent years. Because Facebook has the most active users worldwide, many hospitals in Taiwan have created official Facebook fan pages. Our study was to present an overview of official Facebook fan pages of hospitals in Taiwan. Methods: All 417 hospitals were surveyed about their use of Facebook fan pages in December 2017. The last update time, posts in the past 30 days, number of “Likes”, and other features were analyzed and stratified according to the accreditation statuses of the hospitals. Results: In Taiwan, only 51.1% (n = 213) of the hospitals had an official Facebook fan page. Among these hospitals, 71.8% (n = 153) had updated their pages in the past 30 days, although 89.2% (n = 190) provided online interactions. Academic medical centers tended to have more “Likes” than regional and local community hospitals (on average 5947.4, 2644.8, and 1548.0, respectively). Conclusions: In spite of the popularity of Facebook among the general population, most hospitals in Taiwan do not seem to make good use of this kind of social media. The reasons for the use and nonuse of Facebook on the part of both hospitals and patients deserve further investigation.
Tissue remodeling associated with thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) involves the complex interplay between resident cells (endothelium, vascular smooth muscle, extraocular muscle, and fibroblasts) and those recruited to the orbit, including members of the “professional” immune system. Inflammation early in the disease can later culminate in fibrosis and diminished extraocular muscle motility. TAO remains a poorly understood process, in large part because access to tissues early in the disease is limited and because no robust and complete animal models of Graves’ disease have yet been devised. Remaining uncertainty as to the identity of a pathogenic autoantigen(s) that underlies lymphocyte trafficking to the orbit complicates matters. These limitations in our understanding of extrathyroidal Graves’ disease have resulted in poorly served patients with severe TAO. Therapies have targeted symptoms rather than the underlying disease processes. Our laboratory group has focused over the last several years on defining the peculiarities of the human orbital fibroblasts as a strategy for shedding more light on the pathologies occurring in TAO. We have reasoned that unique properties of these cells might ultimately prove the basis for why the manifestations of Graves’ disease occur in an anatomically selective manner. In this brief review we attempt to survey our findings. We believe that they might provide a “roadmap” for further discovery into the pathogenesis of TAO. Clearly, more questions remain than those thus far answered.
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