098 Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder: A Public Health Concern with Low Awareness

Abstract

Persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) is spontaneous ongoing genital arousal not associated with sexual feelings or activity. It is a serious health concern that can substantially impact patients. To explore public awareness of this issue through internet search trends and understand the quality of the information available to the public. We queried Google Trends to evaluate relative search volume (RSV) from October 2013 to October 2018 of “persistent genital arousal disorder”, “PGAD, and “persistent genital arousal syndrome”. To assess RSV compared to another topic in sexual dysfunction the terms were compared to “erectile dysfunction” (ED). The quality of information available on the internet was assessed using Health On the Net Foundation (HON) certification. Each term was searched in Google and the first two pages of searches were assessed for HON certification. RSV in the United States and internationally on google trends did not show an increase in interest over time. The search term “PGAD” had a higher RSV than “persistent genital arousal disorder” or “persistent genital arousal syndrome” (figure 1). When comparing these terms to the RSV of ED, ED was consistently a more popular search term with an RSV ranging from 30-100 compared to the PGAD terms with RSVs ranging from 0-4. States with the highest RSV for PGAD were Massachusetts (100), Pennsylvania (95), Minnesota (91), Kentucky (91), and Wisconsin (89). Countries with the highest RSV for PGAD were South Africa (100), United States (99), South Korea (87), Canada (85), and Sweden (83). Quality assessment showed 28% of persistent genital arousal disorder, 16% OF PGAD, 33% of persistent genital arousal syndrome, and 63% of erectile dysfunction search Results were HON certified.