Social Media Insights: Analyzing Reactions to MELD 3.0 and MELD-NA Among Medical Professionals

Aims Our research examines sentiments among healthcare professionals, especially physicians, on adopting MELD 3.0 for predicting short-term survival in end-stage liver disease patients. The Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD), historically used for such assessments, includes parameters like international normalized ratio, serum bilirubin, creatinine, and sodium—key in liver transplant organ allocation. Introduced in June 2023, MELD 3.0 adds variables like sex and serum albumin, enhancing predictive accuracy and addressing gender disparities in the transplant waitlist. We explore professional views on its adoption.

Methods Using the Twitter API, Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), and Response Capture Interface (RAI), we gathered Twitter responses. We performed a Chi-Square Test for Independence to explore significant associations between sentiment labels across datasets, assessing dependency. Additionally, we calculated Cohen's Kappa to measure inter-rater agreement, accounting for chance agreement. We also conducted trend analysis to visualize sentiment changes over time, identifying patterns in sentiment shifts across different years.

Results Between December 2019 and November 2023, we collected a total of 74,684 responses. Out of these, there were 220,980 positive, 11,710 negative, and 11,154 neutral responses for MELD 3.0. For MELD-NA, we observed 11,724 positive, 10,832 negative, and 7,164 neutral responses. Comparing MELD 3.0 to MELD-NA, we found that MELD 3.0 exhibited significantly more positive sentiments (Chi-Square: 29.68, p<0.01). Additionally, there was a 15.85% sentiment agreement for MELD 3.0, with a Cohen Kappa coefficient of 0.249. These results indicate that there is a statistically significant association between the sentiment labels in the two datasets, and there is relatively high agreement in sentiment for MELD 3.0.

Conclusions In this study, we explored healthcare professionals' views on adopting MELD 3.0 for evaluating end-stage liver disease patients' short-term survival. MELD has been a reliable measure, with MELDNa incorporating essential parameters for organ allocation in liver transplants. MELD 3.0, introduced in June 2023, enhances accuracy and addresses gender disparities. Using Twitter data, we found that MELD 3.0 garnered significantly more positive sentiments compared to MELD-NA. There was also a notable level of sentiment agreement, highlighting the potential acceptance and value of MELD 3.0 among healthcare professionals.

Publication History

Article published online:
27 March 2025