129 Emerging Data Regarding Online Search Behaviors for Common Sexual Medicine Conditions

Abstract

Sexual medicine is a dynamic field with continual advancements in treatment options for commonly encountered conditions. Patients frequently seek information regarding medical treatment options online. Online search information can thus be used to examine how interest in various conditions and their treatments changes over time. The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in online search behavior for three common sexual medicine conditions: erectile dysfunction, Peryronie’s disease, and male hypogonadism. This study examined Google Trends (http://google.com/trends), a publicly available data tool reporting information on search volumes from Google searches. Google Trends was queried for terms related to erectile dysfunction (“erectile dysfunction”, “penile prosthesis”, “sildenafil”, “intracavernosal injection”), Peyronie’s disease (“peyronies disease”, “xiaflex”, “collagenase clostridium histolyticum”, “verapamil”, “penile plication”, “plaque incision”, “penile prosthesis”), and male hypogonadism (“testosterone”, “testosterone injection", “testosterone pill”, “testosterone cypionate”, “testosterone gel”, and “testosterone replacement therapy”) from January 2004 to March 2019. Search volumes are reported as a search volume index (SVI), which is a relative measure scaled to the peak search volume for that term. Linear regression was used to assess for significance in trends during this time period.