Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease: A comparison before and after the outbreak in South China.
J Gastroenterol Hepatol
; 36(3): 700-709, 2021 Mar.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-32738060
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND AIMS:
Epidemics pose a great challenge to health care of patients. However, the impact of unprecedented situation of COVID-19 outbreak on health care of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients in real-world setting has seldom been investigated.METHODS:
We performed an observational study in a tertiary referral IBD center in China. The mode of health care and medication use was compared before and after COVID-19 outbreak. Electronic questionnaire surveys were performed among gastroenterologists and IBD patients to investigate the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on their attitudes towards telemedicine.RESULTS:
COVID-19 outbreak resulted in substantial decrease of patients participating in standard face-to-face visit during 1 month post-outbreak (n = 51) than pre-outbreak (n = 249), whereas the participation in telemedicine was significantly higher than comparable period in 2019 (414 vs 93). During the 1 month after COVID-19 outbreak, 39 (39/56, 69.6%) patients had their infliximab infusion postponed with the mean delay of 3 weeks. The immunomodulator use was similar between pre-outbreak and post-outbreak. Six elective surgeries were postponed for a median of 43 days. In post-outbreak period, 193 (193/297, 64.98%) of the surveyed physicians have used telemedicine with an increase of 18.9% compared with 46.13% (137/292) in the pre-outbreak period (P < 0.001); 331 (331/505, 65.54%) of the surveyed IBD patients supported that the use of telemedicine should be increased in future health care.CONCLUSION:
COVID-19 outbreak resulted in a great change in health-care access among IBD patients including decrease in standard face-to-face visit and delay of biologics use. There was an increased use and need of telemedicine after COVID-19 outbreak.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Practice Patterns, Physicians'
/
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases
/
Attitude of Health Personnel
/
Attitude to Health
/
Telemedicine
/
COVID-19
/
Health Services Accessibility
Type of study:
Observational_studies
/
Qualitative_research
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
En
Journal:
J Gastroenterol Hepatol
Journal subject:
GASTROENTEROLOGIA
Year:
2021
Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
China