Mining Twitter data to #educate the public about #sepsis

Introduction Sepsis is not well known. Only 58% of Americans know the word sepsis, less than 1% can identify its symptoms and one-third wrongly believe the disease is contagious (1). What if social media educated users about sepsis? There are at least 500 million tweets worldwide per day on Twitter. Objectives and Approach Early detection of sepsis with early treatment is associated with a decrease in mortality (2). The current study aims to use Twitter to share sepsis patients’ experiences. The approach consisted of using text data mining techniques by randomly extracting tweets (N =150) with the hashtag #sepsissurvivor (3) using R software (4). The study retrieved and quantified sepsis patients’ tweets into word frequency distributions using documentation summarization and word cloud techniques (5) for visual representation of Twitter data. Sepsis patients used images symptoms cards (6) to raise awareness. The study used the R package "tesseract" to extract text from images (6). Results Patients sharing their experiences frequently used the word “sepsis.” Cardiorespiratory compromise (septic shock—the highest mortality risk) was illustrated in the words "my heart stops” or elevated "heart" rate or “low blood pressure.” Several studies have reported increased mortality associated with delays in antibiotic administration (7). Many sepsis survivors had antibiotics exposure, both in a timely manner or delayed in use. Sepsis patients experienced long stays in the hospital. Tweets mentioned "infection" 39 times (8), which supports patients’ diagnoses in addition to high rates of "fever." The clustering technique using word association indicated infection was highly correlated with sepsis (9). Sepsis survivors shared the "pain" they went through. Conclusion/Implications Twitter presents an opportunity for patients to disseminate information about sepsis raising awareness about important symptoms. The information tweeted explores the impact of this diagnosis, and the need for early treatment. The current study demonstrates the opportunity to raise awareness through the learned experiences of patients in a novel medium

Variation in communication and family visiting policies in intensive care within and between countries during the Covid-19 pandemic: The COVISIT international survey

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, intensive care units (ICU) introduced restrictions to in-person family visiting to safeguard patients, healthcare personnel, and visitors. Methods: We conducted a web-based survey (March-July 2021) investigating ICU visiting practices before the pandemic, at peak COVID-19 ICU admissions, and at the time of survey response. We sought data on visiting policies and communication modes including use of virtual visiting (videoconferencing). Results: We obtained 667 valid responses representing ICUs in all continents. Before the pandemic, 20% (106/525) had unrestricted visiting hours; 6% (30/525) did not allow in-person visiting. At peak, 84% (558/667) did not allow in-person visiting for patients with COVID-19; 66% for patients without COVID-19. This proportion had decreased to 55% (369/667) at time of survey reporting. A government mandate to restrict hospital visiting was reported by 53% (354/646). Most ICUs (55%, 353/615) used regular telephone updates; 50% (306/667) used telephone for formal meetings and discussions regarding prognosis or end-of-life. Virtual visiting was available in 63% (418/667) at time of survey. Conclusions: Highly restrictive visiting policies were introduced at the initial pandemic peaks, were subsequently liberalized, but without returning to pre-pandemic practices. Telephone became the primary communication mode in most ICUs, supplemented with virtual visits