Am J Surg. Implications for the use of telehealth in surgical patients during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Am J Surg. 2020 Apr 21. pii: S0002-9610(20)30231-2. doi: 10.1016/j.amjsurg.2020.04.026. [Epub ahead of print]
Implications for the use of telehealth in surgical patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Hakim AA¹, Kellish AS¹, Atabek U², Spitz FR², Hong YK³.

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought rapid changes to the way care must be delivered to keep patients and providers safe while simultaneously managing limited resources. Multiple fields have used telemedicine to continue care while maintaining social distancing and quarantine practices in the pandemic. Presented in this paper is a review describing the application of telemedicine in caring for surgical patients, and methods for potential implications of telehealthcare for surgical patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. A review of the PubMed Central and Medline provides articles examining the role of telemedicine for preoperative, postoperative, and follow up evaluation of surgical patients encompassing the past two decades. Additionally, articles examining the financial and legal considerations of telemedicine, and the effect COVID-19 has had on the current legislature were included. We report the summarized findings of these studies, the financial and HIPAA considerations of using telemedicine, potential benefits, pitfalls and strategies for the utilization of telemedicine into the clinical practice of general surgery and its subspecialties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Copyright ? 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.



KEYWORDS:

COVID-19; Coronavirus; PPE; Surgery; Surgical; Telemedicine


PMID:32336519DOI:10.1016/j.amjsurg.2020.04.026