TELEMEDICINE IN GASTROENTEROLOGY: A STUDY ON FEASIBILITY AND PATIENTS’ TRUST DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

ABSTRACT

Background and Aim Telehealth includes both health care delivery (often identified as telemedicine) in terms of disease diagnosis or treatment and several other services, such as prevention, education and public health promotion.1 During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide telemedicine has enabled many patients with chronic diseases to get access to remote assistance, since it has emerged as the ideal solution to overcome the restrictions to perform regular non-urgent follow-up visits to chronic patients and to continue patients’ assistance. Some positive reports on the use of telemedicine in gastroenterology among healthcare providers and patients have been published, but a patient’s trust perspective about video-consultations has been missing to date.2-5 Our study aimed at ascertaining our gastroenterological patients’ trust in video-consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and Methods At our Gastroenterology Unit in Milan (Italy), which is a tertiary referral center for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) and Celiac Disease (CeD), telemedicine was used in place of on-site follow-up visits scheduled but not provided during the COVID-19 pandemic all IBD and CeD outpatients received a phone call, while video-consultations were performed to patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms, with bio-umoral alterations or as needed for those patients who requested it. The patient’s trust in telemedicine was assessed through an adapted version of the PAtient Trust Assessment Tool (PATAT) question-naire.6 The primary endpoint was expressed as a percentage greater than 75% of patients giving a score of at least 4 out of 5 in a Likert Scale for three selected key statements about telemedicine.Results One hundred eighty-eight out of 218 scheduled (86.2%) video-consultations were performed. Among the 188 visits, 163 (86.7%) questionnaires were compiled. The primary endpoint of trust in the telemedicine service was achieved in 95.2%, 89.7% and 87.3% of the respondents for the three selected key statements (trust the service, its capability to solve clinical problems, ease to use).Conclusion During the COVID-19 pandemic our results showed that most of our IBD and CeD patients accepted and trusted video-consultations as an alternative to the traditional in-person examination.References 1) Ray Dorsey E et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 2016;375154–161. 2) Lauren A. G., Raymond K. Current Gastroenterology Reports (2020) 22 12 3) De Jong, M. J. et al. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology 2020;181744–1752 4) Lees CW et al. Gastroenterology. 2020 Sep;159(3)805-808.e1. 5) Allocca M et al. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol 2020;181882–1883. 6) Velsen, L. V. et al, H. Int. J. Med. Inform 2017;9752–58.(Figure presented)