Public Interest in Knee Replacement Fell During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Google Trends Analysis.

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

SUBMITTER: Landy DC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7490570 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature