Public Interest in Knee Replacement Fell During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Google Trends Analysis
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RESPONSE TO COVID-19/ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Public Interest in Knee Replacement Fell During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Google Trends Analysis David C. Landy, MD, PhD
& Brian
P. Chalmers, MD & Thomas J. Utset-Ward, MD, MBA & Michael P. Ast, MD
Received: 4 June 2020/Accepted: 16 August 2020 * Hospital for Special Surgery 2020
Abstract Background: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered medical practice and public behavior in the USA. In spring of 2020, elective surgery including most joint replacement was suspended and much of the public asked to stay at home. As elective surgery resumes, it is unknown how the public will respond. Questions/Purposes: We sought to describe public interest in knee replacement during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Google Trends was used to obtain the daily number of searches for “knee replacement,” “coronavirus,” and “knee pain” from December 19, 2019, to May 14, 2020. The number is on a term-specific scale weighted to the highest number of daily searches for that term. Seven-day weighted averages were used to smooth the data. Results: The number of daily searches for “knee replacement” was stable until around March 8, 2020, after which it decreased through late
This research project utilized publically available data that did not include any specific human subjects and there was no identifying information. To this point, the Google Trends tool does not allow for reporting of search results for less popular searches. This was a motivating factor behind reporting results for knee arthroplasty, one of the most common elective surgeries. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11420-020-09794-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. D. C. Landy, MD, PhD (*) University of Kentucky, 740 S. Limestone Street, Suite K401, Lexington, KY 40536, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. P. Chalmers, MD : M. P. Ast, MD Hospital for Special Surgery, 535 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021, USA T. J. Utset-Ward, MD, MBA University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
March, plateauing at less than half the number of searches. At the same time, searches for “coronavirus” spiked. By early May, searches for “knee replacement” had not meaningfully increased, though at the end of the search period the slope turned positive and coronavirus searches decreased. Searches for “knee pain” initially followed a similar pattern to “knee replacement,” though the decline was not as steep, and by late April searches for “knee pain” had meaningfully increased. Conclusion: Public interest in knee replacement, assessed through internet search queries, decreased during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While interest in pain has returned, the continued decreased level of interest in surgery may represent a fear of surgery among the general public in the setting of COVID-19. Surgeons may wish to focus outreach and education efforts on the safety and efficacy of knee replacement. Keywords COVID-19 . arthropla
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