Analysis of Twitter Conversations in Obstetric Anesthesiology Using the Hashtag #obanes During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: #OBAnes is the most used hashtag in obstetric anesthesiology. The primary objective of the study was to characterize #OBAnes tweets at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Observational study of all tweets using #OBAnes between June 30, 2019 and October 19, 2020. A list of 19 topics was compiled to categorize each tweet. All Twitter users were manually assigned into one of 19 Symplur Healthcare Stakeholder categories.Results: There were 12 431 tweets with #OBAnes during the study period, posted by 1704 unique users. The top user category was Doctor (n = 1211, 71%) with 9665 (78%) tweets. The top three topics identified within Twitter conversations were neuraxial anesthesia, COVID-19, and general anesthesia.Conclusions: Twitter facilitated thousands of obstetric anesthesia-related discussions during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with most conversations centering on anesthesia type (neuraxial or general anesthesia).