Genetic counseling during COVID-19 pandemic: Tuscany experience.
Mol Genet Genomic Med
; 8(10): e1433, 2020 10.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-692458
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
COVID-19 outbreak prompted health centres to reorganize their clinical and surgical activity. In this paper, we show how medical genetics department's activity, in our tertiary pediatric hospital, has changed due to pandemic.METHODS:
We stratified all our scheduled visits, from March 9th through April 30th, and assessed case-by-case which genetic consultations should be maintained as face-to-face visit, or postponed/switched to telemedicine.RESULTS:
Out of 288 scheduled appointments, 60 were prenatal consultations and 228 were postnatal visits. We performed most of prenatal consultations as face-to-face visits, as women would have been present in the hospital to perform other procedures in addition to our consult. As for postnatal care, we suspended all outpatient first visits and opted for telemedicine for selected follow-up consultations interestingly, 75% of our patients' parents revealed that they would have cancelled the appointment themselves for the fear to contract an infection.CONCLUSIONS:
Spread of COVID-19 in Italy forced us to change our working habits. Given the necessity to optimize healthcare resources and minimize the risk of in-hospital infections, we experienced the benefits of telegenetics. Current pandemic made us familiar with telemedicine, laying the foundations for its application to deal with the increasing number of requests in clinical genetics.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Telemedicine
/
Genetic Counseling
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
Mol Genet Genomic Med
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Mgg3.1433
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