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. 2025 Aug;39(8):4890-4898.
doi: 10.1007/s00464-025-11884-1. Epub 2025 Jun 23.

Global insights: fluorescence guided surgery

Rene Aleman  1   2   3 , Julio Aleman  4 , Nicolas Brozzi  5   6 , Alberto Rancati  7 , Diego Sinagra  7 , Ana Carrasquilla  8 , Raul J Rosenthal  7   5 , Fernando Dip  9
Affiliations

Global insights: fluorescence guided surgery

Rene Aleman et al. Surg Endosc. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Fluorescence guided surgery (FGS) has been progressively and globally adapted by multiple surgical disciplines over the last decade. Determining its reach and rate of expansion as a navigational surgical technique is challenging from traditional surveys. Google-trends (GT) was introduced as an ongoing-developing web-kit providing data on search trends to analyze the general population interest on specific topics. The purpose of this study is to implement GT data as an indicator for the world's interest in FGS.

Methods: GT was used to access data for specific medical subject headings (MeSH) terms associated with FGS, from 2019 to 2024. Collected data included interest over time, interest by country/continent, and related queries. Data were represented as search interest relative to the highest point on global charts for a given region and time. A value of 100% was set as peak popularity for searched term (s). Multiple correlation analyzes were performed between MeSH terms and surgical subspecialties.

Results: The number of worldwide searches related to the MeSH terms indocyanine green (ICG) and fluorescence imaging (FI) have consistently increased over time, from 47 and 64% in 2019, to 88 and 69% by the end of 2024, respectively. America withholds the continent with the highest interest for ICG and FI, followed by Europe and Asia with 50 and 45%, respectively. Correlation analyzes with surgical subspecialties showed a significant positive relationship between the interest over time for ICG and fluorescent imaging when paired with endocrine surgery (p < 0.0001; p < 0.0001), urologic surgery (p = 0.003; p = 0.002), and gynecologic surgery (p < 0.0001; p = 0.005).

Conclusions: The data conveyed by GT complements the outlook of FGS across the world. Implementing these trends alongside healthcare advocacy and patient therapeutic education, FGS can further expand its applications and potentials to practice safe surgery.

Keywords: Fluorescent guided surgery; Google trends; Indocyanine green; Patient therapeutic education.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Disclosures: Doctors Rene Aleman, Julio Aleman, Alberto Rancati, Raul J. Rosenthal and Fernando Dip, are all investors and developers for Dendrite Imaging® (Gera, Germany) and Intelligent Surgical Eye (Miami FL). Doctors Rene Aleman, Nicolas Brozzi and Raul J. Rosenthal are recipients of an institutional clinical research grant from Abiomed®/Johnson & Johnson MedTech (Danvers MA) – IRB# 24-442. All authors are active staff members for the International Society for Fluorescence Guided Surgery. Ethical approval: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the provided manuscript are appropriately investigated and resolved.

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