Can we use Google trends to estimate the demand for plastic surgery?

Excerpt

Nowadays, patients interested in aesthetic plastic surgery procedures increasingly seek advice on social media and search engines [1]. Since Google is the most popular search engine worldwide, Google Search is an important tool for patients researching aesthetic plastic surgery procedures and finding hospitals or even single surgeons [2]. Google compiles and provides these search data to the public, through a platform called Google Trends (GT) [3] (Alphabet Inc., Mountain View, California, United States). Research in health care has used GT data to explore public interest and trends, for example, on complementary and alternative medicine, urolithiasis, flu or bariatric surgeries [4‐7]. In the field of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery, Google trends has for instance been used to detect patients’ insights to the latest trends, interest in breast augmentation or cosmetic body procedures in general. [8, 9] …