ABSTRACT
Background: Guidelines recommend walking trainings for peripheral arterial disease (PAD) management. Supervised walking training is superior to walking advise to improve the walking distance. Telehealth service with nurse support may close this gap. Patients and methods: This study introduces a telehealth service, "Keep pace!", which has been developed for patients with symptomatic PAD (Fontaine stage IIa and IIb), enabling a structured home-based walking training while monitoring progress via an app collecting unblinded account of steps and walking distance in self-paced 6-minute-walking-tests by geolocation tracking to enhance intrinsic motivation. Supervision by nurses via telephone calls was provided for 8 weeks, followed by 4 weeks of independent walking training. Patient satisfaction, walking distance and health-related quality of life were assessed. Results: 19 patients completed the study. The analysis revealed an overall high satisfaction with the telehealth service (95.4%), including system quality (95.1%), information quality (94.4%), service quality (95.6%), intention to use (92.8%), general satisfaction with the program (98.4%) and health benefits (95.8%). 78.9% asserted that the telehealth service lacking nurse calls would be less efficacious. Pain-free walking distance (76.3±36.8m to 188.4±81.2m, +112.2%, p<0.001) as well as total distance in 6-minute-walking test (308.8±82.6m to 425.9±107.1m, +117.2%, p<0.001) improved significantly. The telehealth service significantly reduced discomfort by better pain control (+15.5%, p=0.015) and social participation (+10.5%, p=0.042). Conclusions: In conclusion, patients were highly satisfied with the telehealth service. The physical well-being of the PAD patients improved significantly post vs. prior the telehealth program.
Subject(s)
Exercise Therapy , Patient Satisfaction , Peripheral Arterial Disease , Quality of Life , Walking , Humans , Pilot Projects , Peripheral Arterial Disease/nursing , Peripheral Arterial Disease/diagnosis , Peripheral Arterial Disease/therapy , Peripheral Arterial Disease/physiopathology , Male , Female , Aged , Middle Aged , Treatment Outcome , Exercise Therapy/nursing , Recovery of Function , Exercise Tolerance , Time Factors , Mobile Applications , Home Care Services , Telemedicine , Walk Test , Aged, 80 and over , MotivationABSTRACT
The aim of this paper was to evaluate the effect of telemedical care of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) patients with the digital treatment pathway model DiabCare Tirol. METHODS: 27 courses of patients with GDM, who were telemonitored through the integrated care program DiabCare Tirol in a diabetes outpatient clinic in Tyrol, Austria during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, were analyzed. In addition, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on telemedicine interventions for GDM were researched, and their results were used for comparison with this disease management method. The patient outcome analysis was used to examine the effects of the integrated care program involving telemonitoring support and compared them to the results of RCTs in which participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups, either mobile monitored or standard treatment group. RESULTS: The feasibility of the digital treatment pathway model was confirmed in practice, as the trend analysis of the 27 GDM patients involved showed significantly improved glycaemic control. Results of RCT studies tend to support the findings of DiabCare Tirol. CONCLUSION: Benefits of telemonitoring with integrated care to support conventional therapy cannot be dismissed, especially in times of the pandemic. Continuous outcome research with larger patient numbers will be necessary to confirm the effectiveness of telemonitoring in a regular care setting.
