JMIR infodemiology
Online Information-Seeking Behavior Regarding Vitreous Floaters in the United States: Google Trends Analysis
By Seeboonruang T, Dihan QA, Surgent-Nahay JL and 3 others.
Abstract
Background
Vitreous floaters are a prevalent phenomenon, with some patients experiencing persistent symptoms that substantially degrade their vision. Public interest and information-seeking behavior regarding vitreous surgery are challenging to quantify using claims alone.
Objective
The aim of this study is to evaluate temporal and geographic patterns of public interest in vitreous floaters and related interventions in the United States and to contextualize this interest relative to retina specialist availability.
Methods
In this retrospective observational study, we queried Google Trends for search terms originating in the United States from 2008 to 2025. We extracted the relative search volume (RSV) using a composite of terms combined with the Google Trends "+" operator. State-level counts of vitreoretinal surgeons from the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) database were used to calculate surgeon density per 100,000 population. We calculated a search-to-surgeon index (SSI) as the ratio of state-level RSV to retina surgeon density to serve as an exploratory metric of public interest relative to specialist availability. We evaluated associations using the Mann-Kendall trend test, Sen slope, and Spearman correlation.