I can only assume that other #hcsm fanatics were geeking out a little like I was this morning as IU Health took the Twitterverse through a four-and-a-half hour live tweet of a kidney transplant procedure.
Using the hashtag #calebskidney, @IU_Health posted photos, factoids and step-by-step updates, and fielded questions as doctors removed a kidney from 33-year-old Colin Newton and transplanted it into his friend, 31-year-old Caleb Johnson, who had been on dialysis since December. (See their story here.)
It wasn’t the first time this has been done. In 2009, Children’s Medical Center in Dallas live tweeted a father-to-son kidney transplant and others have done a hand transplant, open-heart surgery, robotic cancer surgery and brain surgery. But IU Health officials wanted to do the live tweet to raise awareness about organ donation, according to the Indianapolis Star. If that was the goal, then the hospital succeeded: Just a few hours into the procedure, one tweeter asked how he could become a donor. The response was retweeted numerous times and one participant responded that she’d started paperwork to donate.
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Live tweeting a surgery is a bold move because you can never know what’s going to happen during the procedure, or who’s going to chime in on the conversation. But things seemed to go smoothly, aside from the one disruptive hashtag user who posted negative opinions about the health system throughout the Twittercast but was mostly ignored by other followers. Overall, it seems to have been a good PR move not only for organ donation but also for the hospital.
Check out some highlights from below. (Be warned, there are a few images from the surgery).