Madendere S. et al., 2022: Global Web Trends Analysis of Minimally Invasive Urinary Stone Treatment in the Last Decade and during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Madendere S, Değer MD, Aktoz T.
Çorlu State Hospital, Urology, Tekirdağ, Turkey.
Trakya University Faculty of Medicine, 64058, Urology, Edirne, Turkey.
Trakya University Faculty of Medicine, 64058, Urology, Edirne, Turkey.
Abstract
With the rising incidence of urinary stone disease, web searches for stone treatments are increasing. Google Trends (GT) data over a 10-year period and during the COVID-19 pandemic were used to investigate the trend variations for the most popular minimally invasive stone therapies based on time and region. GT can create a line graph that shows how interest in various territories has risen or decreased over time. Search terms were generated for extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL), percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL), retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS), ureterorenoscopy (URS) and laparoscopic pyelolithotomy/ureterolithotomy. Using the "global" inquiry category, the data was included "worldwide" from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2021. In recent years, Google and YouTube searches for total minimally invasive stone treatments have increased. RIRS, URS and PNL trends revealed a substantial rise in the regression analysis (p<0.05), but ESWL trends showed a significant reduction (p<0.05). RIRS was the main intervention with interest growing most over time. Web searches for stone treatments decreased in the first period of the COVID-19 pandemic. To a rising degree of involvement, patients and physicians from all over the world utilize the internet to search for minimally invasive stone operations. RIRS, URS, and PNL are becoming more popular in web trends and ESWL still has the highest trend despite the decline in popularity recently. The number of trustworthy web-based tools about stone treatments should be increased and patients and physicians should be directed to these sources.
J Endourol. 2022 Mar 29. doi: 10.1089/end.2022.0086. Online ahead of print.
Comments 1
This article summarizes a new approach to get information on the use or popularity of different methods for stone removal. The authors used the global web trend tool to get an idea of how frequently different procedures were searched for.
It was shown that the search trends roughly corresponded to the frequency of treatment procedures. The overall conclusions were that the interest in RIRS, URS and PCNL was increasing, while that of SWL decreased. Nevertheless, SWL still had the highest trend!
During the studied 13-year period RIRS increased most over time. This is a finding that reasonably well corresponds to the shift in treatment methods that occurs globally.
One specific observation was made for the COVID-period during which, not unexpectedly, there was a delay in all procedures and a decrease in surgery by 73%.
The conclusion is that whereas SWL still is a popular method because its non-invasiveness combined with the possibility of anaesthesia-free out-patient treatments, there was a prediction that RIRS in the future will be more commonly applied than SWL. This means that there is a big challenge to technically improve the non-invasive approach.
Hans-Göran Tiselius