Postoperative Video Consultations Reduce Postoperative Burden

Postoperative video consultations can relieve the cost of travel and other burdens of in-person visits for patients who have undergone cataract surgery, while still providing high-quality care, according to a presentation given at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting, held May 5-8 in San Diego,

Presenter Lucia Pelosini, FRCOphth, evaluated the novel process that integrates remote postoperative video consultation to routine medical care. The research considered the feasibility, safety, accuracy, and patient satisfaction use of a novel telemedicine software that facilitates live postoperative video consultations, assesses anterior segment imaging, and includes an interactive visual acuity measurement.

This study took into account 65 patients (mean age 73 years) 2 weeks after undergoing routine cataract surgery and compared their experiences with an equivalent cohort of patients who attended in-person postoperative consultations. The patients who received the postoperative video consultations underwent subjective assessments of any symptoms and compliance with prescribed medications, remote visual evaluations of the external eye, assessment of photos of the anterior segment obtained using a smartphone camera, a digital analysis of hyperaemia on photographs supplied by the patient, and a remote interactive measurement of ETDRS visual acuity.

The investigation reveals that the software-assisted postoperative video consultations resulted in a reliable assessment of patient symptoms, their compliance to medication, and examinations of the external eye in all cases. Of the study participants who were evaluated remotely, 4% required an in-clinic follow up. Those cases were all due to intolerance to postoperative medications. After 5 weeks the participants who underwent postoperative video consultations underwent additional evaluation. The clinicians found no significant adverse effect in this later review.

The study also polled patients on their assessment of the postoperative video consultations as compared with in-person postoperative follow-up visits. The researchers found that 97% of patients were satisfied with the postoperative video assessments.

“We demonstrated that the video consultation was effective, safe, accurate and satisfactory in this cohort of patients following routine cataract surgery,” according to the presentation. “The novel process of integrating remote video consultation to routine medical care has the advantage of reducing hospital attendances and the cost of traveling for patients.”