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Global Web Trends Analysis of Minimally Invasive Urinary Stone Treatment in the Last Decade and during the COVID-19 Pandemic - Beyond the Abstract

As a result of dietary patterns and a sedentary lifestyle, urinary stones are growing more widespread across the world.1 Due to recent technological breakthroughs, minimally invasive interventions such as percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL), retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS), ureterorenoscopy (URS), extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL), and laparoscopic stone surgery have become the primary line of therapy for stone diseases.2 Patients and clinicians from all around the world use the web to look for minimally invasive stone procedures. As a result, web trends analysis haS become an important metric in medicine. We demonstrated that Google Trends (GT) data accurately represents the daily practice in previous study.3 While there have been researches on the popularity of minimally invasive stone treatments in daily practice, there have been none on which therapies are more popular in global web trends including the pandemic period.


In this published study, we aimed to analyze the trend changes for the most popular minimally invasive stone procedures across time, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, using GT and YouTube data. It was also attempted to determine what may be causing the trend variances.

Google and YouTube searches for totally minimally invasive stone treatments have grown in the last decade. The regression analysis for RIRS, URS and PCNL trends showed a significant increase (p<0.05), but ESWL trends showed a significant decrease (p<0.05). Year-based changes and statistics are shown in our article with detailed graphics. The top nations for PCNL, RIRS, URS, laparoscopy and ESWL searches were Iran, Spain, Canada, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates. Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in February-March 2020, interest in all minimally invasive stone procedures has dropped dramatically on Google Trends and YouTube searches. The trends returned to former levels after a few months.4 The web trends correlate with the national analysis which showed that urinary stone surgeries decreased by 72.8% during the pandemic.5

Our findings show that patients and clinicians from all around the world use the internet to look for minimally invasive stone procedures. Stone therapies are more popular in nations with a warm climate or a high socioeconomic level. RIRS, URS, and PCNL are becoming more popular in web trends, while ESWL continues to be the most popular despite a recent decline in popularity. There is a correlation between the percentages of these therapies used in everyday practice and web trends. In addition to Google, YouTube videos are becoming more popular, but the number of reliable sources should be increased.4 As a result, the medical field's relationship with technology is steadily growing, both in terms of medical equipment and the web as a source of information. In the medical field, web trends analysis can be used to assess the level of inquisitiveness and knowledge of patients and healthcare professionals.

Written by: Serdar Madendere,1 Müslim Doğan Değer,2 Tevfik Aktoz2

  1. Department of Urology, Çorlu State Hospital, Tekirdağ, Turkey
  2. Department of Urology, Trakya University Medicine Faculty, Edirne, Turkey

References:

  1. Morales-Martínez A, Melgarejo-Segura MT, Arrabal-Polo MA. Urinary stone epidemiology in Spain and worldwide. Arch Esp Urol. 2021;74(1):4-14.
  2. Jain M, Manohar CS, Nagabhushan M, Keshavamurthy R. A comparative study of minimally invasive percutaneous nephrolithotomy and retrograde intrarenal surgery for solitary renal stone of 1-2 cm. Urol Ann. 2021;13(3):226-231.
  3. Değer MD, Madendere S. Erectile dysfunction treatment with Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitors: Google trends analysis of last 10 years and COVID-19 pandemic. Arch Ital Urol Androl. 2021;93(3):361-365.
  4. Madendere S, Değer MD, Aktoz T. Global Web Trends Analysis of Minimally Invasive Urinary Stone Treatment in the Last Decade and during the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Endourol. 2022.
  5. Bozkurt O, Sen V, Irer B, et al. Nation-wide analysis of the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on daily urology practice in Turkey. Int J Clin Pract. 2021;75(4):e13735.

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