Impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 on patients with toothache: Analysis of tweets on Weibo

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on toothache patients through posts on Sina Weibo. METHODS: Using Gooseeker, we searched and screened 24,108 posts about toothache on Weibo during the dental clinical closure period of China (February 1, 2020–February 29, 2020), and then divided them into 4 categories (causes of toothache, treatments of toothache, impacts of COVID-19 on toothache treatment, popular science articles of toothache), including 10 subcategories, to analyze the proportion of posts in each category. RESULTS: There were 12,603 postings closely related to toothache. Among them, 87.6% of posts did not indicate a specific cause of pain, and 92.8% of posts did not clearly indicate a specific method of treatment. There were 38.9% of the posts that clearly showed that their dental treatment of toothache was affected by COVID-19, including 10.5% of the posts in which patients were afraid to see the dentists because of COVID-19, and 28.4% of the posts in which patients were unable to see the dentists because the dental clinic was closed. Only 3.5% of all posts were about popular science of toothache. CONCLUSIONS: We have studied and analyzed social media data about toothache during the COVID-19 epidemic, so as to provide some insights for government organizations, the media and dentists to better guide the public to pay attention to oral health through social media. Research on social media data can help formulate public health policies.