Biswas Swagata, Adhikari Shreya Das, Gupta Nishkarsh, Garg Rakesh, Bharti Sachidanand Jee, Kumar Vinod, Mishra Seema, Bhatnagar Sushma
Department of Onco-Anaesthesia and Palliative Medicine, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Indian J Palliat Care. 2020 Jun;26(Suppl 1):S31-S35. doi: 10.4103/IJPC.IJPC_161_20. Epub 2020 Jun 30.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, and fear from contagion, the advantages of telemedicine are clearly outweighing the setbacks by minimizing the need for individuals to visit health-care facilities. Our study aims to assess how palliative medicine physicians could follow up on cancer patients and barriers they faced, discuss their results, and evaluate their treatment response with the help of telemedicine.
We conducted a prospective analysis of the smartphone-based telemedicine service at our palliative care (PC) unit from March 25, 2020, to May 13, 2020. We recorded the patient's reason for call, main barriers to a hospital visit, and the assistance given to them by the physician on call. Each caller was asked to measure his/her satisfaction with the service on a 4-point scale.
Out of 314 patients, 143 (45.54%) belonged to Delhi and 171 (54.46%) belonged to other states. 157 patients sought help for symptom management; 86 patients needed to restock their opioid medications. Seventy-one patients required information regarding their oncological treatments requiring consultation from other departments. Titration of oral opioids and medication prescription ( = 129), contact details of other PC units at their native state for opioid procurement ( = 55), and attachment to our community-based PC service ( = 22) were main modes of management. Fifty-six patients were very satisfied and 152 patients were satisfied with the service.
Telemedicine is the future of health-care delivery systems. In PC, we deal with immunocompromised debilitated cancer patients and telemedicine is immensely helpful for us to provide holistic integrated care to these patients who are unable to visit hospitals regularly.
随着新冠疫情的爆发、封锁措施的实施以及对感染的恐惧，远程医疗的优势通过减少个人前往医疗机构的需求而明显超过了其缺点。我们的研究旨在评估姑息医学医生如何通过远程医疗对癌症患者进行随访以及他们所面临的障碍，讨论研究结果，并评估患者的治疗反应。
我们对2020年3月25日至2020年5月13日在我们姑息治疗（PC）单元基于智能手机的远程医疗服务进行了前瞻性分析。我们记录了患者打电话的原因、前往医院就诊的主要障碍以及值班医生给予他们的帮助。每位来电者被要求在4分制量表上衡量其对服务的满意度。
在314名患者中，143名（45.54%）来自德里，171名（54.46%）来自其他邦。157名患者寻求症状管理方面的帮助；86名患者需要补充阿片类药物。71名患者需要有关其肿瘤治疗的信息，这需要咨询其他科室。口服阿片类药物滴定和药物处方（=129）、在其家乡邦获取阿片类药物的其他PC单元的联系方式（=55）以及加入我们基于社区的PC服务（=22）是主要的管理方式。56名患者对服务非常满意，152名患者对服务满意。
远程医疗是医疗服务提供系统的未来。在姑息治疗中，我们处理免疫功能低下的虚弱癌症患者，远程医疗对我们为这些无法定期前往医院的患者提供全面综合护理非常有帮助。
