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Effect of smartphone application assisted medical service on follow-up adherence improvement in pediatric cataract patients

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Abstract

Purpose

To evaluate the potential of the smartphone application assisted medical service to increase patient compliance in attendance of follow-up after pediatric cataract treatment.

Methods

This prospective study enrolled a total of 163 pediatric cataract patients with uneventful surgery. According to their follow-up intervention method, patients were divided into the smartphone application assisted medical service group (WeChat group, 75 patients) or control group (88 patients). Attendance at five follow-up appointments after surgery was recorded. The percentage of patients that attend each follow-up appointment and the compliance of refractive correction were assessed.

Results

Although no significant difference was observed in the first appointment comparing the two groups (98.7% vs. 94.3%, p = 0.293), the attendance rates at the other appointments of the WeChat group were significantly higher than the control group (second: 98.7% vs. 89.8%, third: 97.3% vs. 83%, fourth: 93.3% vs. 78.4%, fifth: 80% vs. 56.8%, total: 93.6% vs. 80.5%, respectively). Compared with the control group, the odd ratios for adherence improvement were 4.4 for males (95% confidence index [CI] 2.54–7.65), 4.75 for patients more than 2 years old (95% CI 2.41–9.36), 4.19 for intraocular lens implantation (2.29–7.66), 6.93 for unilateral cataract (2.9–16.52), 4.87 for undeveloped cities (2.74–8.65), and 3.49 for cities far away (2.04–5.96), with all the p < 0.0001.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates that the use of smartphone application assisted medical service can significantly improve follow-up attendance after pediatric cataract treatment.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Linqi Xu and Terry G. Coursey for their helpful revisions to the manuscript. The funding organization had no role in the design or conduct of this research.

Funding

This study was funded by research grants from the Provincial Construction Project of Zhejiang (Grant No. WKJ-ZJ-1626), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. LY18H120008), and the Innovation Discipline of Zhejiang Province (lens disease in children).

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Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yun-e Zhao.

Ethics declarations

This study obtained the ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board of the Eye Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University. All the procedures performed were consistent with the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Chang, P., Lin, L., Zhang, H. et al. Effect of smartphone application assisted medical service on follow-up adherence improvement in pediatric cataract patients. Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol 256, 1923–1931 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-018-4080-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-018-4080-z

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