FNAFriday: How cytopathologists learn, teach, and share knowledge on Twitter

• Published in: Diagnostic cytopathology 2020-08, Vol.48 (8), p.706-710
• Main Authors: Expósito‐Afonso, Idaira J., Alcaraz‐Mateos, Eduardo, Labiano, Tania, Pijuan, Lara, Temprana‐Salvador, Jordi, Fitzhugh, Valerie, Fuller, Maren, Madrigal, Emilio, Walavalkar, Vighnesh, Baloch, Zubair W., Jiang, Xiaoyin (Sara)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cellular biology; cytopathology; FNA; hashtag; Humans; Pathologists; Pathology; Social Media - statistics & numerical data; Social networks; SoMe; Twitter
• ISSN: 8755-1039; 1097-0339
• DOI: 10.1002/dc.24461

Background Twitter is an expanding social media network among cytopathologists to share knowledge. Tweets are made up of text which may also include images or video. All tweets labeled under a hashtag can be tracked. The #FNAFriday hashtag was created in 2015 by one of the authors (X.J.) to build a community of individuals, to educate and share interesting cases, and highlight a variety of diagnoses with FNA specimens. Methods We retrospectively extracted all tweets labeled with #FNAFriday from April 2015 to mid‐February 2019 (47 mo) using the Twitter search engine. The data point included: author, number of figures, type of cytology‐stain, use of immunocytochemistry, histochemistry or molecular techniques, and the subspeciality. The educational content was categorized as: live‐tweeting, training activities, and publication references. The number if comments, retweets and likes was also recorded. Results A total of 349 original tweets using #FNAFriday were tracked with an average of 7.43 tweets/month. We describe the “top three” countries with most tweets, active users and subspecialties. The most frequent stain was Papanicolau and part of the content of the tweets was using cellblock (14.04%), histologic correlation (10.03%), immunocytochemistry (8.60%), molecular tests (2.01%), gross pictures (4.58%), and radiologic pictures (3.4%). Conclusion The presence of cytopathologists on Twitter who want to share their cases has increased. The weekly FNAFriday label with other cytology hashtags is a specific keyword for those interested in the field.