VIDEO: Clinical text messaging useful in management of fatty liver disease

CHICAGO — In this exclusive video from Digestive Disease Week, Ashwani K. Singal, MD, from the hepatology department at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, discusses the use of text messaging in the management of patients with fatty liver disease.

“We used the text messaging approach using a patient’s cell phone as a strategy to impact fatty liver disease outcomes and improvement of weight and other parameters of fatty liver disease like lipid enzymes and lipid profile,” Singal said. “The reason we did this study ... basically runs behind no effective therapies for this disease [existing] except weight loss of about 7% to 10%.” The impact of text messaging is documented in obesity, but has not yet been studied in patients with fatty liver disease, he added.

Singal and colleagues designed a randomized study with a control arm and an arm of patients who would receive clinically administered text messages three times a week for 6 months. At the end of the 6 months, the patients in the text messaging arm lost an average of 5% of their body weight from baseline compared with 2% in the control group who received standard care with average clinic visits of every 3 or 4 months.

Reference: Axley PD, et al. Abstract 355. Presented at: Digestive Disease Week; May 6-9, 2017; Chicago.

Disclosure : Singal reports no relevant financial disclosures.