Understanding the Public's Emotions about Cancer: Analysis of Social Media Data

Stigmatization of drinking patients with liver cancer: The role of socioeconomic status

Patients with liver cancer may face stigmatization due to cancer, alcohol consumption, or both. This study addresses gaps in the existing literature regarding stigmatization of alcohol-related liver cancer patients, particularly its connection with socioeconomic status (SES). The study explores whether the SES of a fictional character with alcohol addiction and liver cancer influences stigma levels reported by participants. Additionally, it investigates how participants' personal characteristics, such as alcohol consumption and healthcare professional status, impact stigmatization. This study aims to provide new insights regarding the role of stigmatization in liver cancer treatment and management, emphasizing in socioeconomic determinants. The method is based on three scenarios describing a woman character with alcohol abuse and liver cancer. The scenarios depicted a woman character with either low, medium or high SES. Each participant (N = 991) was randomly assigned to one of the three scenarios. After reading it, each participant answered questionnaires assessing negative attitudes towards the character. Four scales were used: "Negative attributions about people with health problems", "Causality of cancer", "Controllability of drinking" and "Reluctance to helping behavior". Data were analyzed using ANOVA and t-tests. The scenario describing a character with a low SES significantly received more "Negative attributions about people with health problems" than the character with medium or high SES. Participants having higher alcohol consumption themselves showed lower stigma scores for three out of four scales than participants with lower consumption. In addition, participants identified as health professionals had lower stigma scores regarding the scales "Negative attributions about people with health problems" and "Controllability of drinking", and higher scores for the subscale "Reluctance to helping behavior", compared with non-professionals. A character with low SES received more negative attributions than the one with higher SES. Participants' own alcohol consumption and professional status (being health professional or not), influenced their stigmatizing attitudes.

Perspectives and Experiences of Patients With Thyroid Cancer at a Global Level: Retrospective Descriptive Study of Twitter Data

BACKGROUND

Twitter has become a popular platform for individuals to broadcast their daily experiences and opinions on a wide range of topics and emotions. Tweets from patients with cancer could offer insights into their needs. However, limited research has been conducted using Twitter data to understand the needs of patients with cancer despite the substantial amount of health-related data posted on the platform daily.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to uncover the potential of using Twitter data to understand the perspectives and experiences of patients with thyroid cancer at a global level.

METHODS

 This retrospective descriptive study collected tweets relevant to thyroid cancer in 2020 using the Twitter scraping tool. Only English-language tweets were included, and data preprocessing was performed to remove irrelevant tweets, duplicates, and retweets. Both tweets and Twitter users were manually classified into various groups based on the content. Each tweet underwent sentiment analysis and was classified as either positive, neutral, or negative.

RESULTS

A total of 13,135 tweets related to thyroid cancer were analyzed. The authors of the tweets included patients with thyroid cancer (3225 tweets, 24.6%), patient's families and friends (2449 tweets, 18.6%), medical journals and media (1733 tweets, 13.2%), health care professionals (1093 tweets, 8.3%), and medical health organizations (940 tweets, 7.2%), respectively. The most discussed topics related to living with cancer (3650 tweets, 27.8%), treatment (2891 tweets, 22%), diagnosis (1613 tweets, 12.3%), risk factors and prevention (1137 tweets, 8.7%), and research (953 tweets, 7.3%). An average of 36 tweets pertaining to thyroid cancer were posted daily. Notably, the release of a film addressing thyroid cancer and the public disclosure of a news reporter's personal diagnosis of thyroid cancer resulted in a significant escalation in the volume of tweets. From the sentiment analysis, 53.5% (7025/13,135) of tweets were classified as neutral statements and 32.7% (4299/13,135) of tweets expressed negative emotions. Tweets from patients with thyroid cancer had the highest proportion of negative emotion (1385/3225 tweets, 42.9%), particularly when discussing symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

 This study provides new insights on using Twitter data as a valuable data source to understand the experiences of patients with thyroid cancer. Twitter may provide an opportunity to improve patient and physician engagement or apply as a potential research data source.

Evaluation of Sleep Quality, Depression, and Quality of Life in Patients with Breast Cancer Related Lymphedema

Background: Breast cancer-related lymphedema (BCRL) is a serious health condition negatively affecting psychological state, sleep quality, and quality of life (QOL) of patients. These complications of BCRL can be overlooked in routine clinical practice. The aim of this study is to evaluate sleep quality, depression, and QOL in patients with different stages of BCRL. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 111 consecutive women patients with BCRL attending to lymphedema unit of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Hospital in Ankara City Hospital. Demographical and clinical data of patients were noted. Sleep quality was assessed with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, day-time sleepiness was assessed with Epworth Sleepiness Scale, depression was assessed with Beck Depression Questionnaire, and QOL was assessed with Lymphedema Quality of Life Questionnaire-arm. Results: Median age of patients was 57 (49-63) (25%-75% interquartile range). Nearly 58.8% of the patients had sleep disturbances, and 29.7% of the patients had depression. Presence of both sleep disturbance and depression was associated with increased age. Patients with sleep disturbance were found to be more depressive and vice versa, (p < 0.001, p < 0.001, respectively). Sleep disturbance, depression and day-time sleepiness, and higher body mass index were all associated with lower QOL scores. Conclusions: Presence of sleep disturbances and depression should be evaluated in every patient with BCRL with special attention to elderly. Rehabilitative management of BCRL should include psychiatric evaluation and interventions. Future studies should intend to assess the risk factors that affect psychological state, sleep quality, and QOL in patients with BCRL.

Neuropathic Pain in Pancreatic Cancer: An Update of the Last Five Years

Pain is the main symptom of pancreatic cancer (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, PDAC). Pain in pancreatic cancer may be visceral, somatic or neuropathic in origin. Pain is produced by tissue damage, inflammation, ductal obstruction and infiltration. Visceral nociceptive signals caused by damage to the upper abdominal viscera are carried along sympathetic fibers, which travel to the celiac plexus nerves and ganglia, which are found at the T12-L2 vertebral levels, anterolateral to the aorta near the celiac trunk. From here, the signals are transmitted through the splanchnic nerves to the T5-T12 dorsal root ganglia and then on to the higher centers of the central nervous system. Somatic and neuropathic pain may arise from tumor extension into the surrounding peritoneum, retroperitoneum and bones and, in the latter case, into the nerves, such as the lumbosacral plexus. It should also be noted that other types of pain might arise because of therapeutic interventions, such as post-chemoradiation syndromes, which cause mucositis and enteritis. Management with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents and narcotics was the mainstay of therapy. In recent years, celiac plexus blocks and neurolysis, as well as intrathecal therapies have been used to control severe pain, at times resulting in a decreased need for drugs, avoiding their unwanted side effects. Pain may impair the patient’s quality of life, negatively affecting patient outcome and resulting in increased psychological stress. Even after recognizing the negative effect of cancer pain on patient overall health, studies have shown that cancer pain is still undertreated. This review focuses on neuropathic pain, which is difficult to handle; thus, the most recent literature was reviewed in order to diagnose neuropathic pain and its management.

Framework for Social Media Analysis Based on Hashtag Research

Social networks have become a common part of many people’s daily lives. Users spend more and more time on these platforms and create an active and passive digital footprint through their interaction with other subjects. These data have high research potential in many fields, because understanding people’s communication on social media is essential to understanding their attitudes, experiences and behaviours. Social media analysis is a relatively new subject. There is still a need to develop methods and tools for researchers to help solve typical problems associated with this area. A researcher will be able to focus on the subject of research entirely. This article describes the Social Media Analysis based on Hashtag Research (SMAHR) framework, which uses social network analysis methods to explore social media communication through a network of hashtags. The results show that social media analysis based on hashtags provides information applicable to theoretical research and practical strategic marketing and management applications.

Use of social media data for disease based social network analysis and network modeling: A Systematic Review

Burden due to infectious and noncommunicable disease is increasing at an alarming rate. Social media usage is growing rapidly and has become the new norm of communication. It is imperative to examine what is being discussed in the social media about diseases or conditions and the characteristics of the network of people involved in discussion. The objective is to assess the tools and techniques used to study social media disease networks using network analysis and network modeling. PubMed and IEEEXplore were searched from 2009 to 2020 and included 30 studies after screening and analysis. Twitter, QuitNet, and disease-specific online forums were widely used to study communications on various health conditions. Most of the studies have performed content analysis and network analysis, whereas network modeling has been done in six studies. Posts on cancer, COVID-19, and smoking have been widely studied. Tools and techniques used for network analysis are listed. Health-related social media data can be leveraged for network analysis. Network modeling technique would help to identify the structural factors associated with the affiliation of the disease networks, which is scarcely utilized. This will help public health professionals to tailor targeted interventions.