title: Rosacea patients seeking advice: Qualitative analysis of patients' posts on a rosacea support forum.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social media have become outlets for patients to voice opinions and ask questions. Since suffering from rosacea is an isolating experience and the disease is poorly understood, patients use social media to expand their knowledge about the condition.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To understand rosacea patients' online health information seeking habits to obtain a better insight of their educational needs.
  
  
  METHODS
  Ten percent of posts in online rosacea forum composed of 3350 members and 27 051 posts, discussing patient viewpoints and concern, selected by stratified random sampling. Three hundred and nine queries were directly categorized to patients "seeking advice" by two investigators and qualitatively analyzed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients primarily sought advice about treatments (n = 155, 50.1%), triggers (n = 53, 17.1%), diet (n = 48, 15.5%), skin care (n = 37, 11.9%) and special presentations of the disease (n = 22, 7.1%). Questions frequently pertained to adverse effects, efficacy and target of therapy (78, 49, 30 posts, respectively).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Proactively providing reliable resources and comprehensive explanations on treatments, triggers, diet and skin care could be helpful in reducing patients' confusion about rosacea and enhancing rosacea patient-physician relationships.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .
authors.forename: Hossein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Alinia
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moradi Tuchayi
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .
authors.forename: Michael E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Farhangian
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .
authors.forename: Karen E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .
authors.forename: Sarah L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .
authors.forename: Sandy
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuo
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .
authors.forename: Irma
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Richardson
authors.affiliation: a Department of Dermatology , Wake Forest School of Medicine, Center for Dermatology Research , Winston-Salem , NC , USA .|b Department of Pathology , Wake Forest School of Medicine , Winston-Salem , NC , USA , and.|c Departments of Public Health Sciences , Wake Forest School of Medicine , Winston-Salem , NC , USA.
authors.forename: Steven R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Feldman
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D012393:Rosacea / Q000628:therapy*; D017592:Skin Care / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Rosacea; adverse effects; diet; forum; information resources; message board; physician patient relationship; treatments; triggers