Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 23, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 14, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 2, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19 pandemic and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: patients perception at the time of telemedicine
ABSTRACT
Background:
After the COVID-19 outbreak, the Italian Government stopped most regular healthcare activity. Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients had limited access to outpatient clinics and hospitals. We aim to report the perception of the COVID-19 emergency from a cohort of IBD patients during the first weeks of the lockdown.
Objective:
We aim to report the perception of the COVID-19 emergency from a cohort of IBD patients during the first weeks of the lockdown.
Methods:
We invited by e-mail IBD adult patients from the University of Salerno (Campania, South Italy) and the University of Padua (Veneto, North Italy) to answer an ad hoc anonymous survey about COVID-19. We also collected data on demographic and disease characteristics.
Results:
167 IBD patients from Padua and 83 from Salerno answered the survey (mean age 39.7 ± 13.9 years, women 46.4%). We found that IBD patients were particularly worried about the current situation (enough 30.8% and much/very much 56%) as they felt more vulnerable due to their disease (enough 28% and much/very much 43.6%). IBD patients from the red zone of Veneto were more worried than patients from Campania (p=0.001) and men felt to be more susceptible to the virus compared to women in general (p=0.05). Finally, remote medicine was appreciated more by younger patients than the older ones (p=0.042).
Conclusions:
The results of our survey demonstrate that the lockdown had a significant impact on the psychological aspects of our patients and suggest the need for increasing the contact with IBD patients, even through telemedicine, to ensure health care but also provide correct information and psychological support
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