Modern Search Analytics: What Are Patients Asking about Varicocele Embolization?

Patients often use search engines like Google when considering elective interventional radiology procedures such as varicocele embolization (VE). For each search term, Google distills frequently asked questions and links users to websites with answers. This data has not been characterized for VE and can be used by IR to help improve patient counseling and awareness.

Materials and Methods: SearchResponse.io, a commercial marketing database, stores scraped questions, links, and popularity from the “People Also Ask” section. For VE, the database was queried for “varicocele embolization”, “embolization of varicocele”, “embolization for varicocele” and British spelling variants. Questions were first categorized using Rothwell’s classification (Fact, Policy, Value), and then into additional subcategories (Fact: Specific Activities & Restrictions, Recovery, Technical Details, Cost, Condition Details; Policy: Indications, Management of Risks & Complications; Value: Pain, Evaluation of Symptoms, Evaluation of Intervention). Websites were classified into five categories (Commercial, Academic, Medical Practice, Government, and Social Media). Two reviewers performed the classification, and a third reviewer resolved discrepancies.

Results:

A total of 197 unique questions were extracted from 88 unique links at 57 unique domains. The most popular subcategories were evaluation of intervention (49, 24.6%), recovery (39, 19.6%), technical details (39, 19.6%), condition details (21, 10.6%), cost (20, 10.1%), pain (20, 10.1%), specific activities & restrictions (5, 2.5%), indications (4, 2%), management of r/c (1, 0.5%), and evaluation of symptoms (1, 0.5%). 65 (32.7%) of the websites were categorized as belonging to medical practices, 58 (29.1%) academic, 38 (19.1%) government, 37 (18.6%) commercial, 1 (0.5%) social media. There was no statistically significant difference in the distribution of websites (p = 0.50) or questions (p = 0.13) subcategories as stratified by popularity.

Conclusion:

Our results suggest that patients searching for information about VE are most interested in value questions surrounding VE, recovery process, and technical details. Google most often referred patients to medical practices and academic centers. Moving forward, IR should increase focus patient counseling on the value proposition of VE compared to other treatments. Future research should consider evaluating the accuracy of the information pulled by Google from the linked sites in answering the FAQs and other search engines.