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Sentiment Analysis Surrounding Blepharoplasty in Online Health Forums
Tracy J Lu1, Anne Xuan-Lan Nguyen2, Xuan-Vi Trinh3
1Department of Ophthalmology, Byers Eye Institute, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.
Online discussions reveal that blepharoplasty patients experience significant fear and sadness. Patients frequently report unexpected negative symptoms, highlighting the emotional impact of this common aesthetic surgery.
Area of Science:
- Aesthetic surgery
- Psychological impact of cosmetic procedures
- Online health communities
Background:
- Upper and lower blepharoplasty are frequent aesthetic surgical procedures.
- Outcomes are subjective, impacting patient self-identity and beauty perceptions.
- Online patient forums offer valuable insights into patient experiences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze emotions associated with blepharoplasty discussions in an online health forum.
- To identify prevalent emotions and patient-reported symptoms related to blepharoplasty.
Main Methods:
- Scraped MedHelp forum for "blepharoplasty" threads using Python.
- Conducted sentiment and emotion analysis using IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding.
- Categorized keywords into clinical themes: symptoms, doctor, treatment, medication, and body.
Main Results:
- Analyzed 52 threads, 154 posts, and 1365 keywords.
- Overall sentiment was negative for both posts (average -0.15) and keywords (average -0.30).
- Sadness was the most frequent emotion, while disgust was the least frequent.
Conclusions:
- Fear and sadness are the dominant emotions expressed by blepharoplasty patients online.
- Patients report unexpected negative symptoms not typically anticipated by surgeons.
- Online discourse provides crucial data on the psychological aspects of blepharoplasty.
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