Determining the Trend of Public Interest in Pediatric Solid Tumors: A Pre- and Post-COVID Pandemic Analysis

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic has had a signi fi cant impact on our daily life and led to a surge in digitization and utilization of resources available on the Internet. 1 This shifting trend is also re fl ected in health care and medicine, where apart from general medical anxiety due to the pandemic, the public relied on information technology for addressing their medical concerns. Pediatric solid tumors often cause a degree of anxiety and stress among parents of the affected children. 2 With growing access to the Internet, parents of children diagnosed with cancer often resort to using its resources for fi nding further information related to their child ’ s diagnosis and prognosis. We sought to evaluate the pre-and postpan-demic interest in the information on pediatric solid tumors available on the Internet by the public. Google Trends is a powerful, freely accessible tool that provides information on Internet search data and gives access toalargelyun fi lteredsampleofactualsearchrequestsmadeto Google. 3 Google Trends was used to conduct search for terms from the parents ’ perspective after a diagnosis of an extracranial pediatric solid tumor for their child. Three common tumors used were “ Wilms Tumor, ” “ Neuroblastoma, ” and “ Hepatoblastoma. ” The search terms list consisted of “ Wilms Tumor, ” “ Wilms Tumor Survival Rate, ” “ Wilms Tumor Symptoms, ” “ Wilms Tumor Treatment, ” “ Neuroblastoma, ” “ Neuro-blastoma Survival Rate, ” “ Neuroblastoma Symptoms, ”