Assessing global COPD awareness

A study in the current issue of the European Respiratory Journal has used Google Trends to analyse search engine query data. The search term "chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" was compared to the search volume of the major causes of death in high-income countries. It found that the most frequent search terms were "diabetes mellitus", "stroke" and "breast cancer". The term "chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" ranked eighth, indicating that it is under-represented in the public interest and there is still an urgent need to raise awareness about this disease. Access the study here or browse the June issue at erj.ersjournals.com