Introduction: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common bacterial infections, affecting 150 million people each year worldwide. Patients also increasingly seek answers to health-related questions online. This study aims to characterize the public’s interaction with online information on recurrent UTIs, and categorize recurrent UTI patient concerns. Methods: A popular online community of recurrent UTI sufferers was queried to gauge common concerns about the disease. An Airtable database of questions was created containing interviews of recurrent UTI patients, to identify and categorize concerns. Patient concerns helped guide keywords for Google Trends analysis and social media analysis to identify areas of interest for recurrent UTI patients. Buzzsumo was used to calculate average online engagement (likes, shares, comments, views) with information on recurrent UTIs. The reliability of highly engaged articles was evaluated using the DISCERN questionnaire. Results: Mean engagement and view count for articles and videos related to recurrent UTIs was 1654 and 6802, respectively. Buzzsumo analysis revealed four broad searches for recurrent UTIs: general information, treatment, causes, herbal remedies. “Herbal remedies” had the highest engagement and views. Overall DISCERN scores indicated moderate reliability, but the “herbal remedies” category had the lowest reliability scores. Google Trends analysis identified “causes” and “treatment” categories to be of high interest. The 10 most popular categories of concern observed after categorizing patient questions were antibiotics, microbiome, vaccine, inflammation/prevention, pelvic pain, sex, testing, symptoms, diet/lifestyle, and hormones. Conclusions: Recurrent UTIs are a highly engaged urologic disease online, with subcategories of poor reliability being the most engaged. This highlights the need for urologists to be aware of unreliable content that may be targeting patients and complicating their ability to treat recurrent UTIs effectively. Urologists should counteract misinformation by providing evidence-based information on recurrent UTIs online. SOURCE OF Funding: None.
