Social media insights into patient perceptions of orthognathic surgery

Patients contemplating orthognathic surgery are increasingly turning to online forums, such as Reddit, as a supplementary source of information prior to undertaking a surgical treatment pathway. This study was designed to profile the main topics pertaining to orthognathic surgery which patients were discussing online, using data analytics methodologies and machine learning algorithms. An Application Programming Interface (API) wrapper was used to identify posts relating to orthognathic surgery on Reddit, within the /jawsurgery subreddit. The information was exported for further analysis. Topic modelling was undertaken with the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm, Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) tool was used for sentiment analysis, and a machine learning tool was used to pinpoint language cues in the posts. A total of 10265 posts were included in the analysis. These posts were categorised into one of ten topic groups based on qualitative analysis by the authors. Overall, there was positive sentiment toward orthognathic surgery within each of the topic groups within the subreddit. The topic groups which carried the highest sentiment were aesthetic change, aesthetic preferences and disagreements and, postoperative experience. Patients are actively seeking alternative sources of information regarding orthognathic surgery, particularly pertaining to the experiences of other patients. Whilst overall there is a positive sentiment toward surgery, both positive and negative experiences are posted online.