Scoping review on the role of social media in oral health promotion

- OBJECTIVE: This review was conducted to assess the role of social media in oral health promotion by reviewing the perspec-tives and evaluation methods of previous relat-ed studies.MATERIALS AND METHODS: The preferred reporting items PRISMA checklist was used to structure this review. Key search terms were iden-tified to examine databases including PubMed, Web of Science and Embase. Manual searches in relevant journals and materials were also conduct-ed in the meantime.RESULTS: A total of 640 articles were identi-fied after multi-source screening and duplicates removing, and finally 19 original studies pub-lished before April 2020 met the inclusion cri-teria. These studies mainly cover the fields of dentistry education and research, clinical treat-ment, and preventive dentistry. Both traditional and new-type social media have advantages and focuses, as well as biased information. Detailed assessment methods and indicators are classi-fied into several groups, which could be select-ed to use in future research.CONCLUSIONS: The application of social me-dia in oral health promotion is becoming popu-lar with the development of information technol-ogy. The broader use in the future, covering den-tistry, mass health education, both long-term and short-term treatments of additional clinical content, requires further evaluation and supervi-sion in online information sharing process. The reasonable selection of methods and indicators according to different topics and preference is of great importance.