WEB SEARCH TRENDS RELATED TO ORAL HEALTH ISSUES DURING THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK IN BRAZIL: AN INFODEMIOLOGICAL SURVEY

Abstract

Objective: To compare the web search trends related to oral health issues during the COVID-19 outbreak with the previous year, focusing on dental trauma (DT), bruxism (BX) and toothache (TA). Methods: It was an infodemiological study carried out using Google Trends tool. Popular terms related to oral health issues investigated were used in Portuguese to retrieve relative search volumes (RSV) normalized by the algorithm. The case period consisted of data relating to the interval from December 12, 2019 to December 12, 2020, while the control period referred to the interval from December 11, 2018 to December 11, 2019. Results: Within the case and control periods, popular terms related to TA were significantly more searched on the web, followed by BX and DT terms (all p-value <0.05). There were higher RSV for all popular terms related to oral health issues investigated during the COVID-19 outbreak than in the previous year (all p-value <0.05), especially in the third and fourth quarters. The mean frequencies were significantly higher in the case period for all oral health issues (all p-value <0.05). Conclusion: In Brazil, it was possible to observe that the web search trends related to oral health issues investigated were greater during the COVID-19 outbreak than in the previous year.