Abstract
INTRODUCTION: As a profession, plastic surgeons must meet the public demand for esthetic and reconstructive procedures. Patients search for physicians using Google, which offers insights into patient needs through their search history. METHODS: The Google Trends Relative Search Volumes (RSV) were pulled for all searches for "plastic surgery" over 12 months. The number of active plastic surgeons per state was divided by Census Bureau population estimates to calculate the surgeons-per-capita value, or "surgical concentration." The Google score divided by this concentration yields a "surgical demand index" for each state. RESULTS: Florida, New York, and Connecticut had the greatest concentration of surgeons per ten-thousand people (0.220, 0.217, and 0.209, respectively), while Wyoming, Arkansas, and Vermont had the smallest (0.051, 0.071, 0.080). California exhibited the greatest number of Google searches (RSV=100), followed by Florida and Hawaii (RSV=95). Oregon (RSV=38), Virginia (RSV=52), and Alaska (RSV=58) had the fewest searches. The "surgical demand index" was greatest in Wyoming (1187.778), Oklahoma (993.751), and Arkansas (974.664) and smallest in Oregon (264.682), Virginia (320.716), and Connecticut (354.872). CONCLUSION: The distribution of US plastic surgeons is not homogeneous. The Google data suggest that some markets (e.g. Oregon) are saturated while others (e.g. Wyoming) have significant demand that is not met by the number of plastic surgeons in those states.