LAUSR

Nowadays, patients interested in aesthetic plastic surgery procedures increasingly seek advice on social media and search engines [1]. Since Google is the most popular search engine worldwide, Google Search is an important tool for patients researching aesthetic plastic surgery procedures and finding hospitals or even single surgeons [2]. Google compiles and provides these search data to the public, through a platform called Google Trends (GT) [3] (Alphabet Inc., Mountain View, California, United States). Research in health care has used GT data to explore public interest and trends, for example, on complementary and alternative medicine, urolithiasis, flu or bariatric surgeries [4–7]. In the field of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery, Google trends has for instance been used to detect patients’ insights to the latest trends, interest in breast augmentation or cosmetic body procedures in general. [8, 9] Based on a similar study from the USA by Blau et al., the aim of this study was to investigate the relative popularity of internet searches for plastic and aesthetic surgery across Austria for a 12-month period in order to compare these data to the number of plastic surgeons in each state [10]. In the present study, facts such as median income and bedoccupancy rates of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery (PARS) Departments were additionally included, to identify regional market needs for aesthetic plastic surgery procedures in every state of Austria. Data was obtained from several sources. Google data is reported as the relative search volume (RSV) for all searches for “Plastic Surgery” and “Aesthetic Surgery” for the year 2017 (12-month period). Data is reported state-by-state, and normalized by the total search volume. The frequency of a search is divided by the total number of searches over the same time and geographic distribution. This adjustment is managed by Google; hence, the state with the highest search volume does not necessarily hold the highest ranking. Data is reported on a scale from 0 to 100 based on a proportion to all searches [3]. Based on data provided by Statistik Austria, the statistics department of Austria, the ratio of plastic surgeons per 10,000 people in each state and the capacity and bed-occupancy rate of PARS Departments were calculated. Based on a similar study from the USA, the surgical demand index (SDI), which is a measure of how the concentration of plastic surgeons matches the public curiosity with plastic surgery, was used [10]. The index is calculated by dividing the Google relative search volume (RSV) by the concentration of plastic surgeons in any individual state, according to the formula: