Open AccessDiabetes management in telemedicine: patients’ opinion (preliminary data)
Author(s) -
A Foglia
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
j. amd
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2532-4799
DOI - 10.36171/jamd21.24.2.3
Subject(s) - telemedicine , medicine , second opinion , medical emergency , health care , type 2 diabetes mellitus , pandemic , covid-19 , diabetes mellitus , family medicine , pathology , disease , endocrinology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , economics , economic growth
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions, telemedicine has enabled healthcare to be provided to patients with chronic diseases, although with some restrictions. During the lockdown The Campania region was the first to order (03/27/2020), to protect the health of citizens suffering from diabetes mellitus, the use of telemedicine and a tele-health service was activated in our clinics. At the end of the consultation, a survey was submitted to our diabetic patients in order to evaluate their opinion about the telemedicine experience in comparison with the traditional clinic visit. 100% of both type 1 and type 2 patients consider the telemedicine visit adequate, 89.2% of types 1 and 75.9% of types 2 consider the two forms of visit absolutely overlapping from a professional point of view, and even 6.9% of type 2, but none of type 1, considers the tele-visit more effective than the traditional visit. However, only 44.8% (type 2 diabetic patients) and 13,5%% (type 1 diabetic patients) expressed a preference for telemedicine visits over traditional visits. Telemedicine has allowed continuity of care for diabetic patients despite the difficulties of this emergency time. We believe that the opinion of patients and health care professionals on the telemedicine experience can be useful to assess the limitations and advantages in order to improve and enhance the use of this method. KEY WORDS diabetes mellitus; telemedicine system; survey.