What is it about?
The COVID-19 pandemic caused discontinuities in cancer care in most countries. We describe the real-world impacts of implementing a contingency plan employing telemedicine for cancer patients at the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Neoplasicas, Peru, during the pandemic.
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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Telemedicine was an effective solution for continuing medical care during the pandemic. . In this study, a decrease in care of 70% was reported at the beginning of the pandemic, which is similar to that reported in other locations. Telemedicine allowed the reduction of the healthcare gap to 8% in this sample. In addition, the versatility of this service allowed the institution to briefly increase the number of visits by this modality during the most critical moments of the pandemic, thus guaranteeing the continuity of medical care in this vulnerable population.
Perspectives
It is important to appropriately select patients alongside the recommendations of experienced medical staff to account for the preferences of patients and the complexity of cases. Furthermore, telemedicine requires informatics support to allow the interaction between care providers and patients. Cooperation agreements should be made with community institutions or local health centers to generate support and decrease potential disparities. This modality is here to stay as a useful tool for the management of selected cancer patients.
Katia Roque
Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Neoplasicas
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The impact of telemedicine on cancer care: real-world experience from a Peruvian institute during the COVID-19 pandemic, Future Oncology, November 2022, Future Medicine,
DOI: 10.2217/fon-2022-0239.
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