TY - JOUR JF - MJIRI JO - Med J Islam Repub Iran VL - 37 IS - 1 PY - 2023 Y1 - 2023/2/01 TI - Assessing Google Searches for Toothache during COVID-19 Lockdowns TT - N2 - Background: Lockdowns due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic forced many dental offices to be closed. This study aims to investigate the association between COVID-19 imposed lockdowns and online searches for toothache using Google Trends (GT). Methods: We investigated GT online searches for the term “toothache” within the past 5 years. The time frame for data gathering was considered as the initiation and end dates of national/regional lockdowns in each country. We used 1-way analysis of variance to identify statistical differences in relative search volumes (RSVs) between 2020 and 2016-2019 for each country. Results: Overall, 16 countries were included in our analyses. Among all countries, Indonesia (n = 100), Jamaica (n = 56), Philippines (n = 56), Iran (n = 52), and Turkey (47) had the highest RSVs for toothache in the specified period. Compared with the previous 4 years, higher RSVs were seen in the world (as a whole) (2020 RSVs, 94.4; vs 2019 RSVs, 77.8 [P < 0.001]) and 13 countries (81.3% of the included countries). Conclusion: Generally, searching for the term “toothache” showed an increase during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 compared with the past 4 years. This can imply the importance of dental care as urgent medical care during public health emergencies such as COVID-19. SP - 282 EP - 293 AU - Sofi-Mahmudi, Ahmad AU - Shamsoddin, Erfan AU - Ghasemi, Peyman AU - Nasser, Mona AU - Mesgarpour, Bita AD - Cochrane Iran Associate Centre, National Institute for Medical Research Development, Tehran, Iran KW - Toothache KW - COVID-19 KW - Google Trends KW - Health Care Seeking Behaviour KW - Lockdown UR - http://mjiri.iums.ac.ir/article-1-7596-en.html DO - 10.47176/mjiri.37.36 ER -