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Video

Head and Neck Surgery

(A519) Characterizing Portrayals of PTC on Social Media

Monday, October 13, 2025
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDT
Location: OTO EXPO, Posters

    Presenting Author(s)

  • Saif Salih, BS

    Medical Student
    RUSH Medical College
    Chicago, Illinois, United States

    • Co-Author(s)

  • RA

    Rachel Ann Akers, MS

    Medical Student
    Rush Medical College
    Chicago, Illinois, United States

    • Senior Author(s)

  • RA

    Rachel Ann Akers, MS

    Medical Student
    Rush Medical College
    Chicago, Illinois, United States

Disclosure(s):
Saif Salih, BS: No relevant relationships to disclose.
Rachel Ann Akers, MS: No relevant relationships to disclose.


Introduction: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the 6th most frequently diagnosed cancer in young women, who comprise a large portion of social media sites’ userbases. This study seeks to evaluate perception of PTC across a large social media platform (TikTok) using user metrics. To date, no similar studies have examined PTC content on social media.

Methods: TikTok’s search page was queried for #papillarythyroidcarcinoma. The top 100 results were included and assessed for type of content, gender of user, and metrics (likes, comments, follower count, and views). Each video was reviewed by two independent researchers. Data was analyzed via SPSS Statistics.

Results: 86 videos met the inclusion criteria. The majority of videos (96.4%) were posted by patients, while only 3.6% of videos came from an academic or health-focused source. Almost all videos were posted by women (96.4%) and focused on the user’s diagnostic journey (87.1%). Distribution of account type, gender, and video content are shown in Tables 1. The mean number of likes and comments were 3597 and 163, respectively, while the mean number of views was 97,132. The average number of followers from queried accounts was 48,726. Descriptive statistics of user metrics (average, standard deviation, median, and interquartile range) are displayed in Table 2. ANOVA analysis did not reveal any significant difference in engagement metrics across gender, account type, or video content.

Conclusions: This study provides novel insight into the portrayal of PTC on TikTok. The majority of content is created by female patients sharing their diagnostic journey and there is a notable paucity of educational content from healthcare professionals. These findings suggest that there is a large patient audience for educational PTC content and social media provides a valuable online community for patients with PTC. Physicians and cancer centers should leverage this to promote access to evidence-based information on PTC through short-form video content, which has a proven favorable reception based on existing user metrics.