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#EBUSTwitter: Novel Use of Social Media for Conception, Coordination, and Completion of an International, Multicenter
Marcos Lepe1, Pembe Oltulu1, Mariana Canepa1
1From the Department of Pathology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Dr Lepe); the Department of Pathology, Meram Faculty of Medicine, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey (Dr Oltulu); the Department of Pathology, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence (Dr Canepa); the Department of Clinical Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia (Dr Wu); the Department of Pathology, Summa Health Systems, Akron, Ohio (Drs Deeken and Jelinek); the Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York (Drs Alex and Sauter); Patologia, Vall d'Hebron Hospital, Barcelona, Spain (Drs Dinares and Sansano); the Department of Pathology, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio (Drs Doxtader and Mukhopadhyay); the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School, Newark (Dr Fitzhugh); Centre de Biologie, University of Lille, Lille, France (Dr Gibier); the Department of Pathology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India (Dr Jain); the Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (Drs Janaki and Michael); Patologia, Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra, Navarra, Spain (Drs Labiano and Panizo); the Department of Pathology, University of Milano Biocca, Monza, Italy (Dr L'Imperio and Pagni); Patologia, Hospital del Mar, Barcelona, Spain (Drs Pijuan and Sanchez-Font); the Department of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts (Dr Quintana); the Department of Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston (Dr Roy-Chowdhuri); the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston (Drs Skipper and Spruill); the Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (Dr Torous); the Department of Pathology, Dermatopathology, Bone & Soft Tissue, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock (Dr Gardner); and the Department of Pathology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina (Dr Jiang).
Context.—:
Social media sites are increasingly used for education, networking, and rapid dissemination of medical information, but their utility for facilitating research has remained largely untapped.
Objective.—:
To describe in detail our experience using a social media platform (Twitter) for the successful initiation, coordination, and completion of an international, multi-institution pathology research study.
Design.—:
Following a tweet describing a hitherto-unreported biopsy-related histologic finding in a mediastinal lymph node following endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration, a tweet was posted to invite pathologists to participate in a validation study. Twitter's direct messaging feature was used to create a group to facilitate communication among participating pathologists. Contributing pathologists reviewed consecutive cases of mediastinal lymph node resection following endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration and examined them specifically for biopsy site changes. Data spreadsheets containing deidentified data and digital photomicrographs of suspected biopsy site changes were submitted via an online file hosting service for central review by 5 pathologists from different institutions.
Results.—:
A total of 24 pathologists from 14 institutions in 5 countries participated in the study within 143 days of study conception, and a total of 297 cases were collected and analyzed. The time interval between study conception and acceptance of the manuscript for publication was 346 days.
Conclusions.—:
To our knowledge, this is the first time that a social media platform has been used to generate a research idea based on a tweet, recruit coinvestigators publicly, communicate with collaborating pathologists, and successfully complete a pathology study.
