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Are Wikipedia statistics useful in evaluating public interest in neurosurgical diseases? (Preprint)


 BACKGROUND
 Wikipedia, a free, semi-editable online encyclopedia, is currently the fifth most popular website worldwide. It is a leading source of medical information for the public.
 
 
 OBJECTIVE
 To evaluate to what extent Wikipedia page view statistics can assess the public interest in neurosurgical diseases.
 
 
 METHODS
 The Wikipedia Massviews statistics tool was used to find the top ten and bottom ten pages on Wikipedia under the category “Neurosurgery” from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2018. The top ten pages were analyzed for page view correlations with time, the languages available, the top five redirects and the respective PubMed data.
 
 
 RESULTS
 The most popular neurosurgical pages on Wikipedia were: Subarachnoid hemorrhage, Neurosurgery, Idiopathic intracranial hypertension, Intracranial aneurysm and Laminectomy. The bottom pages were: International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial, Dandy's point, Stereotaxic atlas, Traumatic pneumorrhachis and Decerebellate. More popular pages were available in more languages with the most popular being English. Users more often accessed Wikipedia on their phone browser than on desktop; this trend was also seen over Wikipedia English overall. PubMed publications did not correlate to the page views with time.
 
 
 CONCLUSIONS
 Despite the impact of media clamor, Wikipedia statistics offer valuable insight into public health interests and show how users access this information. Our study demonstrates that the most popular neurosurgical topics on Wikipedia are for aneurysms, stroke, hydrocephalus and spine surgery. These topics align themselves with the most common neurosurgery issues. We encourage physicians clarify any questions for the common well-read patient. This allows for a more efficient physician-patient interaction and can help highlight subjects of confusion for future patients especially since the readability of articles on neurosurgery is low.
