Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since May 17, 2024)
Date Submitted: Jul 28, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Influence of Social Media on Treatment Choice of Esophagus Motility Disorder Patients: Orıgınal Artıcle
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Social media (SM) is online platforms that individuals share contents, ideas, videos or blogs. SM use has arisen as a catalyst of social change and can be a promising tool for healthcare delivery. Esophagus motility disorders (EMD) are rare disorders that present with various symptoms such as dyspaghia. There are not many studies that search the influence of SM on patients’ treatment choice. Present study aimed to search the infleunce of social media on EMD patients’ treatment choice. Material and
Methods:
Patients referred for treatment of EMD were enrolled into the study. Questionnaire was used to assess the influence of SM on treatment choice. Participants were asked whether they use SM and search information about EMD treatments. They were divided into three groups according to their SM use and admission type. (Group 1: patients referred by health care provider (HCP) and who did not seek information from SM. Group 2: patients referred by HCP and who seek information from SM. Group 3: patients who admitted directly without referance of HCP after seeking information from SM). Influence of SM on treatment choices were compared between these groups.
Results:
It was found that group 2 patients choosed treatment options that they previously seek from SM rather than HCP recommended. Group 1 patients’ acceptance rate was 37,9 %, whereas group 3 and group 1 were 7,9 % and 40% respectively. The difference was statistically significant. (p <0.001) Conclusion: Present study showed that SM has influence on patients’ treatment choice. They can choose a treatment option that are not recommended by HCP in first line. Patients choice did not contradict with scientific evidence in this example but it may not always happen like this way. Although SM use has a potential to contribute to better healthcare delivery, it has ethical, legal, social considerations. There is current lack of official recommendations for SM use in healthcare for both HCPs and patiens. Further guidelines must be developed to utilize SM use in healthcare in an effective manner.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.