Mp69-05 Twitter Mentions and Academic Citations in Urology Literature

Abstract

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Clinical trials have suggested that pelvic floor rehab (PFR) can improve early urinary control following radical prostatectomy. However, the details surrounding its use in clinical practice and its contribution to cost and value are not well understood. In this context, we examined the use of PFR in a diverse statewide quality improvement collaborative, including patient characteristics, implementation patterns, and costs.METHODS: Using registry data from the Michigan Urological Surgery Improvement Collaborative and claims data from Michigan Value Collaborative, we identified all men who underwent a laparoscopic radical prostatectomy from 04/2014 through 11/2015 with insurance from Medicare or a large commercial payer. All men reported pre-operative urinary function using the STAR questionnaire with scores ranging from 0 (worst) to 21 (best). We compared patient demographics, cancer characteristics, pre-operative urinary function, and 90-day total episode costs of patients who did and did not receive PFR.RESULTS: 142 men met our inclusion criteria, of whom 53 (37%) received pelvic floor rehab. There were no differences in patient or cancer characteristics among patients who did and did not receive PFR. Patients initiated PFR an average of 34 days after discharge (range 15-83 days). Mean baseline urinary function scores were worse for PFR patients (17.8 vs 19.3, p¼0.01). Ninety-day episode costs were similar in the two cohorts, with PFR contributing an average of $422, or 3% of total episode costs.CONCLUSIONS: In a statewide collaborative, PFR is used in the minority of cases, but its use appears to be concentrated among patients with worse baseline urinary function. Incremental costs from PFR are modest, accounting for 3% of 90-day episode costs. In the era of value-based care, decisions about further expanding this therapy will depend on studying its comparative impact on post-operative patient reported outcomes in large groups of non-clinical trial patients.

The impact of social media on citation rates in coloproctology

“…Despite the aforementioned limitations, for the first time in coloproctology the present study demonstrates that articles featured on Twitter are more likely to have higher citation counts than other articles. This is consistent with the results of previous, broader studies regarding social media and citation . Studies have further found that colorectal surgeons tend to be weakly engaged with social media and that, although the uptake of social media is steadily increasing, a large geographical variation still persists .…”

“…Hayon et al . have proposed that one could estimate the ultimate academic impact of a paper by observing the number of Tweets and re‐Tweets of that paper on Twitter . To quantitatively assess the impacts of papers featured on Twitter, Cardona‐Grau et al .…”

“…Hayon et al have proposed that one could estimate the ultimate academic impact of a paper by observing the number of Tweets and re-Tweets of that paper on Twitter [18]. To quantitatively assess the impacts of papers featured on Twitter, Cardona-Grau et al have developed a tool called the 'Twitter impact factor', an example of altmetrics that is positively correlated to JIF and citation rate [30].…”

“…Research regarding the broader role of social media in coloproctology has been conducted in the past . Although a positive correlation between Twitter activity and citation rates has been reported in urology and other fields of medicine , no such research has yet been undertaken in coloproctology. Critically, not all such studies showed a significant correlation between the two variables; therefore, this topic remains somewhat controversial .…”