Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Interest of Google Queries in Cancer Screening and Cancers: A Retrospective Study

Simple Summary The COVID-19 pandemic caused the introduction of restrictions to reduce human migration and gatherings. One of the highly harmful side effects was the disturbances in medical services and continuity of health care. A broad group of oncological patients wishing to undergo screening may search for medical information on the Internet. Using Google Trends statistics, we analyzed the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the interest in cancers and their screenings. Our study aimed to comprehensively compare global interest in cancers and their screenings in 2020–2021. The interest of Google users in cancer screenings increased in 2020–2021 compared to 2015–2019, but the growth was less dynamic than expected. The interest in many cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly lower than in the prepandemic period, especially during March and April 2020. A loss of interest in cancer screenings may delay the diagnosis of malignancies and worsen the long-term outcomes. Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted cancer screening programs and care for individuals with malignancies. We aimed to analyze the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the interest of Google users in cancers and their screenings. We collected data from Google Trends (GT) from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2021 worldwide for nine topics representing cancer screening and the HPV vaccine and for 33 topics representing malignancies. We performed a secular analysis comparing the prepandemic (2015–2019) and pandemic (2020–2021) period. We performed forecasting analysis on the prepandemic timeline to assess interest in the analyzed topics if the pandemic hadnot occurred.The actual interest in most of the analyzed topics was significantly lower than in the forecasted trend. Interest in 6 of the 9 topics representing cancer screening and 3 of the 33 topics representing cancer was higher during the pandemic than in the prepandemic period. The interest of Google users in cancer screenings increased in 2020–2021 compared to 2015–2019, but the growth was less dynamic than expected. The interest in many cancers during the pandemic was significantly lower than in the prepandemic period, especially during March and April 2020. The lower interest in cancers and their screenings may delay the diagnosis and worsen the long-term outcomes.