Mining the Public Mind: A Text-Mining Approach to Dental Implants and Dentures

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to comparatively analyze online information regarding dental implants and dentures utilizing text-mining techniques. Methods: An automated text-mining program was employed to collect and process data using the Korean keywords for "implant" and "denture." Data sources included major search engines, social networking services, and YouTube (Google LLC, Mountain View, CA, USA). A total of 9941 data points for dental implants and 9783 for dentures were retrieved. The analytical approach included word cloud generation, term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) analysis, semantic network analysis, and sentiment analysis. Results: For implants, "dental clinic," "treatment," "surgery," and "insurance" emerged as highly relevant keywords. In contrast, queries regarding dentures frequently included the term "implant," alongside top-ranking, age-related terms such as "abnormality" and "discomfort." TF-IDF analysis revealed that "surgery" and "procedure" ranked higher for implants, whereas "insurance" ranked higher for dentures. Sentiment analysis indicated a predominantly positive public perception of implants (63.09% positive, 36.91% negative), whereas dentures elicited a largely negative sentiment (40.70% positive, 59.30% negative). Conclusions: The text-mining analysis revealed distinct public perceptions regarding the two treatments. Implants were primarily associated with surgical procedures and positive sentiments, whereas dentures were more closely linked to insurance considerations and negative experiences.