Risk Management and Healthcare Policy (May 2021)

Dental Care in the Arab Countries During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Infodemiological Study

  • Al-Khalifa KS,
  • AlSheikh R,
  • Alsahafi YA,
  • Alkhalifa A,
  • Sadaf S,
  • Al-Moumen SA,
  • Muazen YY,
  • Shetty AC

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 14
pp. 2153 – 2162

Abstract

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Khalifa S Al-Khalifa,1 Rasha AlSheikh,2 Yaser A Alsahafi,3 Atheer Alkhalifa,4 Shazia Sadaf,5 Saud A Al-Moumen,6 Yasmeen Y Muazen,7 Ashwin C Shetty8 1Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia; 2Department of Restorative Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia; 3Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Taibah University, Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah, Saudi Arabia; 4The National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 5Department of Dental Education, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia; 6Dental Department, Ministry of Health, Dammam, Saudi Arabia; 7Dental Internship Program, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia; 8Vice Deanship for Postgraduate Studies and Scientific Research, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi ArabiaCorrespondence: Khalifa S Al-KhalifaDepartment of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi ArabiaEmail [email protected]: Twitter is a powerful platform which could be used to reflect on the demand and supply of dental services during a pandemic. The aim of this study was to examine the nature and dissemination of COVID-19 information related to dentistry on Twitter platform Arabic database during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methodology: One hundred and fifty independent searches with a combination of keywords for both COVID-19 and dentistry from a preselected Arabic keyword were carried out for the period from the 2nd of March (first confirmed cases of COVID-19) to the 6th of July 2020. Tweets were filtered to remove duplicate and unrelated tweets. The suitable tweets were 1,150. After calibration, two examiners coded the tweets following two main themes: COVID-19 and oral health-related information. Tweets were then compared with COVID-19 daily events in the Arab countries as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Descriptive analysis was performed to present the overview of the findings using Microsoft Excel.Results: The most retweeted information was the help with urgent consultation or emergency dental treatment during COVID-19 tweeted by a dentist. There were 673 retweets and 1,116 likes of this tweet. The most common tweets related to oral health were needs of dental treatment (n=462, 39.5%) of which, toothaches or wisdom tooth problems constituted 48% of the related tweets.Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it is obvious that social media users reacted to the COVID-19 threat to dental practices. Twitter as one of the social media platforms served as a connection between dental health professionals and patients.Keywords: COVID-19, Twitter, pandemic, oral health, dentistry, social media, tweet, Arab

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