There are many places that we get our information, and in 2024, it’s hard not to ask Dr. Google just about everything that is going wrong (or right?) with us. Honestly, the spiral is a rite-of-passage into navigating the internet. But something that was new to me (yes, yes, I live under a massive rock) are forums. Enter: Reddit.
Essentially, a lot of people can come together and contribute information that is linked around a common thread. Having an operation? Well, suddenly you have access to the experiences, suggestions, and interactions between thousands of people. Life is daunting, surgery is scary, and suddenly there are hundreds of people that have gone through the exact same thing, contributing their lived experience! What a rush!
While this lived experience is something to cherish, it is important that these threads exist in a vast sea of data. If your searches and keywords are biased, you will bias the responses that are filtered to address your question. I had lots of questions, and found lots of answers! Most of them opposing each other! Gah! In this frustration, I tried to compile all of the “answers” across threads grouped within a forum (i.e. r/Reduction, “swelling”) to get a grasp on the structure of the data.
I went through r/Reduction threads to compile answers to my most pressing questions I had before surgery.
Operation techniques
A hot take on drains
TL;DR Drain usage is more about the surgeon than about you.
Now this was really interesting to plot out. I was able to get more than 100 answers, and the proportion of who got drains and who didn’t was almost exactly 50/50! The people who had drains weren’t having more tissue removed, didn’t seem to fit a specific demographic, and didn’t appear to come from a specific region. Surgery outcomes seem to be great for those with and without it. All in all, it really just seems like something that is surgeon specific. Of those that did get drains, average time was about 5 days.
Post-op recovery
Peak Swelling
TL;DR Your brain is ready to go, but your body is not.
These data look left-skewed, where we see more swelling sooner after operation. I was surprised that these data were not MORE skewed– the mean peak swelling is at 1MPO! I think that this may relate to patients getting back to work, or becoming too active too early? Potentially eliciting inflammatory responses of still healing tissues.
Post-op recovery
True Size
TL;DR It’s gonna take many months before you know.
These data are suuuuuper spread out! See how the peaks aren’t are dramatic in the green graph compared to the pink one? It means that everyone’s experiences are much more varied. Here, the mean actually sits around 4 months post-op, which is earlier than the 6-month number we just kind of patch on.
How to read "raincloud" plots. The "mountain" is the spread of the data-- the higher the peak, the more points occur around that given value. This is echoed in the coloured band under the distribution: here, the white point indicates the group mean and the coloured slabs are credible intervals. The darker the colour indicates that we are more statistically certain that a point should occur in that given range. The little points are the raw data I scrubbed from the forums! (forae?)Access (and contribute to!) the code– I have everything up on GitHub. On the second page of the excel are some of the threads I used, although I admittedly got a bit lazy doing this so it’s not the most scientifically rigorous documentation. (In my defense I am 6DPO rn). Please just credit me where it is appropriate.
Check out the live post on Reddit yourself 😉
Chloe Fouilloux 