IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON BARIATRIC SURGERY Rajmohan Rammohan MD; Nisha Dhanabalsamy MD; Abhiman Cheeyandira MD; Emanuele Lo Menzo MD, PhD, FACS, FASMBS ; Samuel Szomstein MD, FACS, FASMBS; Raul Rosenthal MD, FACS, FASMBS The Bariatric & Metabolic Institute, Section of Minimally Invasive Surgery, Cleveland Clinic Florida, Weston, FL, USA BACKGROUND The use of social media has grown rapidly in the recent past. In health care, social media links Healthcare organizations and clinicians to patients. Academic and private institutions try to dominate the networks to influence the patients to augment the stature and publicize their accomplishments. Our aim was to explore the influence of the 3 major social networks namely Facebook, twitter and YouTube on Bariatric Surgery institutions, journals and nonprofit organizations TABLE 1 : INSTITUTES REGISTERED WITH ASMBS SOCIAL NETWORK PRIVATE(N=70) ACADEMIC (N=51) FACEBOOK 351(44.8%) 223(43.6%) TWITTER 268(34.2%) 168(32.8%) YOU TUBE 164(20.9%) 120(23.4%) METHODS A list of Bariatric Surgery Institutes that are registered with American College of surgeons (ACS) and Metabolic and Bariatric surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement program (MBSAQIP) were identified and an online search was conducted by 2 independent authors who then performed a 2-pronged search to identify all accounts of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube that were relevant to Bariatric Surgery. The Identified institutes were divided either as Academic or Private, and all the social media accounts were ranked based on their “Likes”, “Followers” and “Subscribers”. Disparity between Reviewers were resolved by general agreement, and if needed, with a third reviewer FIG 1: BOX AND WHISKER PLOT ON FACEBOOK LIKES RESULTS A total of 692 Bariatric organizations were registered with ASMBS and MBSQIP. Among these, 1294 accounts were identified (574 in Facebook, 436 in Twitter and 284 YouTube accounts). Nearly 60.5% were private organizations and 39.5% Academic. The Academic and private organizations had a similar median number of “likes”, “followers”, “subscribers” on Facebook, twitter and YouTube respectively. Five journals have been identified out of which only 3 had an active Facebook and Twitter account. One nonprofit organization was associated with a Facebook and twitter account. The social media impact on Bariatric surgery showed a similar pattern comparable to that on other medical specialties CONCLUSIONS: This study shows the influence of social media on Bariatric surgery through different social media platforms and number of users in the online networking community. We found that the private Bariatric organizations were more prevalent on the social media than the academic institutions. Content relevance and optimization remains unanswered on the part of academic organizations. We recommend that the academic programs gain more popularity on the social media sites to enhance better communication between the healthcare and patients .