Internet Impressions: A Sentiment Analysis of Reddit Discussions on Peripheral Nerve Surgery

Introduction Public perceptions and interpretations of targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) and regenerative peripheral nerve interface (RPNI) surgery as discussed in online communities like Reddit remain underexplored. This study aims to better describe the needs and priorities of patients undergoing TMR and RPNI by using social media as a lens to analyze public sentiment and understanding.Methods We utilized both Pushshift.io and the official Reddit application programming interface to extract all posts and comments mentioning TMR or RPNI from the r/Amputee subreddit. Extracted posts and comments were evaluated using natural language processing and VADER sentiment scores. Posts were then manually reviewed for theme classification and qualitative analysis. Statistical significance was set at P Results A total of 50 r/amputee posts and 320 r/Amputee comments mentioning TMR were analyzed. The mean sentiment scores for r/Amputee TMR posts and comments were 0.234 and 0.0766, respectively. The number of TMR posts and comments increased significantly over time (P = 0.024, P = 0.005). Major themes included procedural details of RPNI/TMR (54.9%) and pain (44.3%). The average sentiment scores of posts and comments mentioning RPNI were 0.213 and -0.524, respectively. There were significantly more posts and comments mentioning TMR than RPNI (P Conclusions Posts from Reddit users express a net positive sentiment toward both TMR and RPNI. The increase in TMR r/Amputee posts over time may reflect a growing interest in the procedure, while the small sample size of RPNI posts may indicate a target area for patient education.