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Data-Driven Insights on the Effects of COVID-19 on Public Interest in Medical Aesthetics: Part II (Active Analysis).

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected financial and psychosocial factors that influence plastic surgery demand. OBJECTIVES:The authors sought to actively assess public interest changes and the reasons underlying these shifts. METHODS:Using Amazons' Mechanical Turk, we crowdsourced public opinions regarding aesthetic interventions from April 30 to May 3, 2020. The survey assessed prior experience with and interest in 6 aesthetic interventions before and during the pandemic and reasons for changing interest. United States residents aged 18 years and over who passed the attention check were included. RESULTS:We included 704 of 838 total responses. One-half of respondents were female; the median age group was 25 to 34 years. During the pandemic, 21% of respondents had increased and 33% decreased interest in at least one intervention. Non-invasive procedures (7.3%), facial aesthetic surgery (6.6%), and medical-grade skincare (5.9%) elicited the greatest interest increase. Seeing themselves in the mirror more often (43.2%), desire to look better after the crisis (41.8%), and increased time on social media (40.4%) were the top reasons for increased interest. The most common reasons for decreased interest were changing spending priorities (58%), focusing on other health aspects (49.8%), and worrying about infection in medical facilities (46.3%). Almost one-half of respondents considered virtual consultations for interventions of increased interest. CONCLUSIONS:The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected interest in medical aesthetics. Offering telemedicine and discussing detailed COVID-19 infection control policies with patients will be critical to address patient needs and concerns. These findings can be used to improve patient outreach, advertisement, and counseling as practices focus on reopening.

SUBMITTER: Jenny HE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7665353 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Data-Driven Insights on the Effects of COVID-19 on Public Interest in Medical Aesthetics: Part II (Active Analysis).

Jenny Hillary E HE Chandawarkar Akash A Kim Roy R

Aesthetic surgery journal 20210201 3

<h4>Background</h4>The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected financial and psychosocial factors that influence plastic surgery demand.<h4>Objectives</h4>The authors sought to actively assess public interest changes and the reasons underlying these shifts.<h4>Methods</h4>Using Amazons' Mechanical Turk, we crowdsourced public opinions regarding aesthetic interventions from April 30 to May 3, 2020. The survey assessed prior experience with and interest in 6 aesthetic interventions before and dur ...[more]

PMID: 33107566

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Project description:BackgroundIn the current era of widespread access to the internet, we can monitor public interest in a topic via information-targeted web browsing. We sought to provide direct proof of the global population's altered use of Wikipedia medical knowledge resulting from the new COVID-19 pandemic and related global restrictions.ObjectiveWe aimed to identify temporal search trends and quantify changes in access to Wikipedia Medicine Project articles that were related to the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsWe performed a retrospective analysis of medical articles across nine language versions of Wikipedia and country-specific statistics for registered COVID-19 deaths. The observed patterns were compared to a forecast model of Wikipedia use, which was trained on data from 2015 to 2019. The model comprehensively analyzed specific articles and similarities between access count data from before (ie, several years prior) and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wikipedia articles that were linked to those directly associated with the pandemic were evaluated in terms of degrees of separation and analyzed to identify similarities in access counts. We assessed the correlation between article access counts and the number of diagnosed COVID-19 cases and deaths to identify factors that drove interest in these articles and shifts in public interest during the subsequent phases of the pandemic.ResultsWe observed a significant (P<.001) increase in the number of entries on Wikipedia medical articles during the pandemic period. The increased interest in COVID-19-related articles temporally correlated with the number of global COVID-19 deaths and consistently correlated with the number of region-specific COVID-19 deaths. Articles with low degrees of separation were significantly similar (P<.001) in terms of access patterns that were indicative of information-seeking patterns.ConclusionsThe analysis of Wikipedia medical article popularity could be a viable method for epidemiologic surveillance, as it provides important information about the reasons behind public attention and factors that sustain public interest in the long term. Moreover, Wikipedia users can potentially be directed to credible and valuable information sources that are linked with the most prominent articles.

Dataset Information

Data-Driven Insights on the Effects of COVID-19 on Public Interest in Medical Aesthetics: Part II (Active Analysis).

Publications

Data-Driven Insights on the Effects of COVID-19 on Public Interest in Medical Aesthetics: Part II (Active Analysis).

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