Relationship between searching for breast cancer on the web and number of cases of breast cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Breast cancer is the second most frequent cancer in the world and the first among women. Online searches are used to acquire information about symptoms and treatment. Therefore, such searches can be used in trend analysis, helping to predict outbreaks. Objectives: Describe/compare the epidemiologic patients' profile with benign and malignant breast cancer and investigate the relationship between the number of cases of benign and malignant breast cancer with internet searches for "breast cancer", from 2009 to 2013, in different age range. Methods: This epidemiological study used Google Trends and DATASUS (SISMAMA) data. The data were standardized in Microsoft Excel and for statistical analysis, we used the chi-square test and Pearson's correlation test. Results: Our sample is characterized by the predominance of patients in the age group between 35 and 54 years (73.91% and 51.55% for the benign and malignant group, respectively), with an increase in the frequency of older patients in the malignant group (p<0.0001). No statistically significant variation related to patients' education and race was observed. A negative correlation (r=-0.94, p=0.014) was observed between the number of cases of malignant neoplasm and the search for breast cancer on the web, and a positive correlation involving benign neoplasia and in different age groups. Conclusion: The age proportion are different between patients with malignant and benign cancer. A negative correlation between patients with malignant breast cancer and searches on Google Trends, and a positive correlation in different age groups in benign cancer.