Canadians Google for Symptoms of ..
When Canadians use Google to search for information about symptoms, here are the top 10 health conditions that they were looking for:
Over the past year, when Canadians used Google to search for information about symptoms, here are the top 10 health conditions that they were looking for: (1)
- Cancer
- Pregnancy
- Flu
- Diabetes
- Anxiety
- Cold
- Menstruation
- Thyroid
- Depression
- Pneumonia
Google has also seen a rise over the past year from Canadian searches about symptoms for the following conditions: (1)
- Mumps (+500%)
- Food poison (+300%)
- Lyme disease (+200%)
- Norovirus (+200%)
- West nile virus (+120%)
Go ahead and search for information, but please beware of diagnosing yourself with the data that you find online. In a head-to-head study where doctors were given the same medical history and symptom information as online symptom checkers, the doctor got the right diagnosis 72% of the time vs. only 34% for the online apps.(2)
Sources: 1) Google Trends. 2) JAMA Internal Medicine, online October 10, 2016.