Sofi-Mahmudi Ahmad, Shamsoddin Erfan, Ghasemi Peyman, Nasser Mona, Mesgarpour Bita
Cochrane Iran Associate Centre, National Institute for Medical Research Development, Tehran, Iran.
Department of Health Economics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Med J Islam Repub Iran. 2023 Apr 11;37:36. doi: 10.47176/mjiri.37.36. eCollection 2023.
Lockdowns due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic forced many dental offices to be closed. This study aims to investigate the association between COVID-19 imposed lockdowns and online searches for toothache using Google Trends (GT).
We investigated GT online searches for the term "toothache" within the past 5 years. The time frame for data gathering was considered as the initiation and end dates of national/regional lockdowns in each country. We used 1-way analysis of variance to identify statistical differences in relative search volumes (RSVs) between 2020 and 2016-2019 for each country.
Overall, 16 countries were included in our analyses. Among all countries, Indonesia (n = 100), Jamaica (n = 56), Philippines (n = 56), Iran (n = 52), and Turkey (47) had the highest RSVs for toothache in the specified period. Compared with the previous 4 years, higher RSVs were seen in the world (as a whole) (2020 RSVs, 94.4; vs 2019 RSVs, 77.8 [ < 0.001]) and 13 countries (81.3% of the included countries).
Generally, searching for the term "toothache" showed an increase during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 compared with the past 4 years. This can imply the importance of dental care as urgent medical care during public health emergencies such as COVID-19.
2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行导致的封锁迫使许多牙科诊所关闭。本研究旨在利用谷歌趋势（GT）调查COVID-19封锁与在线搜索牙痛之间的关联。
我们调查了过去5年中GT上对“牙痛”一词的在线搜索情况。数据收集的时间范围被视为每个国家/地区封锁的开始和结束日期。我们使用单因素方差分析来确定每个国家2020年与2016 - 2019年相对搜索量（RSV）的统计差异。
总体而言，我们的分析纳入了16个国家。在所有国家中，印度尼西亚（n = 100）、牙买加（n = 56）、菲律宾（n = 56）、伊朗（n = 52）和土耳其（47）在指定时期内牙痛的RSV最高。与前4年相比，全球（整体）（2020年RSV为94.4；2019年RSV为77.8[<0.001]）以及13个国家（占纳入国家的81.3%）的RSV更高。
总体而言，与过去4年相比，2020年COVID-19封锁期间对“牙痛”一词的搜索有所增加。这可能意味着在COVID-19等公共卫生紧急情况期间，牙科护理作为紧急医疗护理的重要性。
