ABSTRACT
Background and aim: During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic there was a substantial change in providing medical care. National and international statements recommended avoiding face-to-face visit for treatment of patients especially for chronic disease. Also lockdown and social distancing cause a lot of concern among patients, which prefer avoid hospital facilities due to fear of contracting COVID-19. For these reason there was a reorganization of inflammatory bowel disease follow-up visit shifting from traditional visit to telemedicine whereas it was possible. Our survey aimed to evaluated satisfaction about follow up video-consulting in IBD patients. Materials and methods: From September to December 2020, 75 video-consults were made as follow up in patients with IBD. Videoconsult wasn’t performed as first visit nor in patients with new clinical issue. Every consult lasted about 15 minutes. At the end of the visit, a questionnaire of satisfaction was e-mailed to each patient. This questionnaire evaluated several items: satisfaction, difficulty of connection, opportunity to repeat the video-consult even in post-Covid-19 era, safety compared to face-to-face visit, level of concern about Covid-19 disease and fear of in-hospital transmission. Results: 70% of the patients indicated an high video-consult rating and in most of cases (88%) there were no connection problems. The majority (88%) would like to repeat the tele-visit even in the post-Covid 19 era (77%). Video-consult seemed to be perceived as safer than face-to-face visit even if, in case of urgent consultation, it was preferred a traditional visit. Moreover, Covid-19 infection and fear of in-hospital transmission was a great concern in the 73% and 58% of the patients, respectively. Conclusions: In our survey, outpatients reported a very high degree of satisfaction with video consultations. It was an easy and safe tool that may become an integral part of clinical practice in the future.