Analysis of the Influence of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Pandemic on the Search for Facial Aesthetic Procedures

The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic caused, in 2020, a serious and urgent health issue worldwide, establishing social distancing rules, which changed daily life in all its aspects. Work relationships and socialization became possible only through virtual networks. As a result, there has been an extreme increase in the exposure of people in general to their own image for many hours a day through cameras and video conferencing applications. This exacerbated exposure to self-image and greater criticism regarding own appearance raised hypotheses that the pandemic state generated in the population the desire to seek improvements in appearance and, consequently, would have caused an increase in searches for aesthetic procedures on the face and upper region of the chest. Therefore, this study aimed to elucidate these questions, using the virtual search trend analysis tool on the Google platform, called Google Trends. Analyzes of the main surgical and non-surgical facial aesthetic procedures carried out by dentistry professionals were done through statistical tests, tables, and observation of graphs generated by Google Trends. With the analysis of the results, a constant growth trend in searches by the public in relation to aesthetic procedures was observed, which may have been triggered by the pandemic, but is not related to it. The growth in Google searches continued after the pandemic state and some showed greater growth years after the declaration of social isolation.