Background and objective.

The use of social media to spread knowled-ge about Plastic Surgery, especially regarding academic issues, is still in its infancy. Recent studies have shown that the hashtag #PlasticSurgery has been used to spread knowledge and leadership in our specialty. However, the influence of national and international meetings in this regard has not been studied, a topic that we propose to study in this article.

Methods.

A retrospective analysis of tweets published in Spanish containing the words "CirugiaPlastica" or the hashtag #CirugiaPlastica was performed, comparing 5 groups: 1. Working days control group (non-coincident with Plastic Surgery meetings); 2. Weekend control group (non-coincident with Plastic Surgery meetings); 3. Iberolatinoamericano Meeting Group; 4. SECPRE (Spanish Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery Association) Monographic Meeting Group; 5. AECEP (Spanish Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Association) meeting group. The following variables were analyzed, among several others: author identity, tweet topic, hashtag #CirugiaPlastica use, educative or promotional finality and the availability of the digital link to a journal article.

Results.

A total of 1165 tweets were analyzed. Tweets written by plastic surgeons, academic institutions and scientific societies were 13.44% in the control groups compared to 18.52% in the meeting groups (p-value = 0.02). The presence of a national or international meeting did not increase significantly the number of educational tweets nor the links to scientific articles (p-value >0.05).

Conclusions.

Analyzed meetings did not show a statistically significant repercussion on the educational content of tweets. Social media should be encouraged during these meetings to spread knowledge and to increase the repercussion of our specialty.

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