Sebopelo Lorraine Arabang, Bourcier Alexandre Jose, Dada Olaoluwa Ezekiel, Adegboyega Gideon, Nteranya Daniel Safari, Kanmounye Ulrick Sidney
Research Department, Association of Future African Neurosurgeons, Yaounde, Cameroon.
Ann Med Surg (Lond). 2021 Oct 16;71:102950. doi: 10.1016/j.amsu.2021.102950. eCollection 2021 Nov.
Global surgery is a growing movement worldwide, but its expansion has not been quantified. Google Search is the most popular search engine worldwide, and Google Trends analyzes its queries to determine popularity trends. We used Google Trends to analyze the regional and temporal popularity of global surgery (GS). Furthermore, we compared GS with global health (GH) to understand if the two were correlated.
This is a retrospective cross-sectional study examining Google Trends of GS and GH. We searched the terms "global surgery" and "global health" on Google Trends (Google Inc., CA, USA) from January 2004 to May 2021. We identified time trends and compared the two search terms using SPSS v26 (IBM, WA, USA) to run summary descriptive analyses and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests.
The ten countries most interested in GS were India (5.0%), the United Kingdom (5.0%), Ireland (4.0%), the United States (4.0%), Australia (3.0%), Canada (3.0%), New Zealand (3.0%), Germany (2.0%), South Africa (2.0%), and Nigeria (1.0%). GS became more popular after 2015 (2.3% vs. 1.3%, P < 0.001) and was consistently less popular than GH (1.6% vs. 45.3%, P = 0.04). The difference between GS and GH interest levels increased after 2015 (45.4% vs. 42.9%, P = 0.04).
GS is less popular than GH, more popular in high-income countries, and has become more popular after 2015 when the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery published its seminal report. The World Health Organization passed resolution WHA 68.15. Future advocacy efforts should target low- and middle-income countries primarily.
全球外科手术在全球范围内是一个不断发展的领域，但其扩张尚未得到量化。谷歌搜索是全球最受欢迎的搜索引擎，谷歌趋势分析其搜索查询以确定流行趋势。我们使用谷歌趋势来分析全球外科手术（GS）的区域和时间受欢迎程度。此外，我们将GS与全球健康（GH）进行比较，以了解两者是否相关。
这是一项回顾性横断面研究，检查GS和GH的谷歌趋势。我们在2004年1月至2021年5月期间在谷歌趋势（谷歌公司，美国加利福尼亚州）上搜索了“全球外科手术”和“全球健康”这两个术语。我们确定了时间趋势，并使用SPSS v26（IBM，美国华盛顿州）对这两个搜索词进行比较，以进行汇总描述性分析和威尔科克森秩和检验。
对GS最感兴趣的十个国家是印度（5.0%）、英国（5.0%）、爱尔兰（4.0%）、美国（4.0%）、澳大利亚（3.0%）、加拿大（3.0%）、新西兰（3.0%）、德国（2.0%）、南非（2.0%）和尼日利亚（1.0%）。2015年后GS变得更受欢迎（2.3%对1.3%，P<0.001），并且一直不如GH受欢迎（1.6%对45.3%，P = 0.04）。2015年后GS和GH兴趣水平之间的差异有所增加（45.4%对42.9%，P = 0.04）。
GS不如GH受欢迎，在高收入国家更受欢迎，并且在《柳叶刀》全球外科手术委员会发表其开创性报告后的2015年后变得更受欢迎。世界卫生组织通过了第WHA 68.15号决议。未来的宣传工作应主要针对低收入和中等收入国家。
