The following is a summary of “Telehealth improves follow-up and monitoring of age-related macular degeneration during the COVID-19 pandemic,” published in the November 2023 issue of Ophthalmology by Huther et al. 

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) patients need monitoring for choroidal neovascularization to prevent vision loss. COVID-19 caused many to miss or delay visits. Researchers performed a retrospective study to assess the impact of telehealth (TH) on AMD patient assessment and health education in the context of COVID-19 care gaps.

This study assessed how TH encounters affect the rate of recommended in-person examinations for 1,103 patients with non-neovascular (dry) AMD. They focussed on patients seen in an outpatient ophthalmology clinic in 2019 who were scheduled for in-person evaluations in 2020 after the COVID-19 outbreak. Logistic regression analysis was employed to identify demographic, clinical, and sociomedical variables linked to TH and subsequent in-person returns. 

Of 1,103 patients, (38%) utilized TH during the study. Patients with a TH encounter were 1.8 times more likely to return for an in-person examination than those without TH (OR: 1.8, 95% CI: 1.4–2.3, P < 0.001). Completing a TH visit was associated with a 3.3 times greater likelihood of detecting new wet AMD (OR: 3.3, 95% CI: 1.04–10.6, P = 0.043). This led to earlier returns for patients with disease progression (62 ± 54 days vs. 100 ± 57 days, P = 0.049).

The study found that telehealth increased follow-up and enabled earlier detection of wet AMD, improving outcomes in dry AMD patients.

Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10792-023-02906-9