Emotional effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on oral surgery procedures: a social media analysis

Altan, Ahmet

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to analyze Twitter users' emotional tendencies regarding oral surgery procedures before and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic worldwide. METHODS: Tweets posted in English before and after the COVID-19 pandemic were included in the study. Popular tweets in 2019 were searched using the keywords “tooth removal”, “tooth extraction”, “dental pain”, “wisdom tooth”, “wisdom teeth”, “oral surgery”, “oral surgeon”, and “OMFS”. In 2020, another search was conducted by adding the words “COVID” and “corona” to the abovementioned keywords. Emotions underlying the tweets were analyzed using CrystalFeel - Multidimensional Emotion Analysis. In this analysis, we focused on four emotions: fear, anger, sadness, and joy. RESULTS: A total of 1240 tweets, which were posted before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, were analyzed. There was a statistically significant difference between the emotions' distribution before and after the pandemic (p < 0.001). While the sense of joy decreased after the pandemic, anger and fear increased. There was a statistically significant difference between the emotional valence distributions before and after the pandemic (p < 0.001). While a negative emotion intensity was noted in 52.9% of the messages before the pandemic, it was observed in 74.3% of the messages after the pandemic. A positive emotional intensity was observed in 29.8% of the messages before the pandemic, but was seen in 10.7% of the messages after the pandemic. CONCLUSION: Infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, may lead to mental, emotional, and behavioral changes in people. Unpredictability, uncertainty, disease severity, misinformation, and social isolation may further increase dental anxiety and fear among people.