Exploring and modelling impacts of third molar experience on quality of life: a real-time qualitative study using Twitter

Abstract

Objectives: (1) To explore and model domains for real-time third molars (TMs) impacts on quality of life (QoL); (2) to assess the percentage of coverage of some generic health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) instruments to the study-identified TMS QoL domains. Methodology: A global cross-sectional sample of Tweets containing “wisdom tooth” over 1 week period retrieved 3537 Tweets. After a random quota sampling, classification and filtering, only 843 tweets were included for thematic analysis. TMs QoL model was constructed based on the identified domains’ associations. Domains for the selected generic HRQoL and OHRQoL instruments were plotted against the study-identified domains to calculate percentages of coverage. Results: The identified QoL domains were: pain (n=348, 41%), mood (n=173, 20%), anxiety and fear (n=54, 7%), enjoying food (n=41, 4%), coping (n=37, 4%), daily activities (n=34, 4%), sleep (n=24, 2%), social life (n=19, 2%), physical health (n=17, 2%), ability to think (n=9, 1%), self-care (n=8, 1%) and sporting & recreation (n=2, <1%). The Assessment Quality of Life instrument (AQoL-8D) covers 87% of TMs QoL domains, while the rest of HRQoL and OHRQoL instruments cover 33%-60%. Conclusion: This study shows how Twitter might be used to get real-time QoL data which might be used to model how TMs impact on QoL. Although the study-identified TMs QoL domains were, generally, under-represented among the assessed generic OHRQoL instruments, the AQoL-8D covers the majority of them. The study identified QoL domains might be used to develop a new OHRQoL measure for TMs.