Study: Patients with CKD, kidney transplant should have ongoing telehealth access
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Key takeaways:
- Patients’ views were mixed regarding telehealth privacy, confidentiality and trust.
- Fewer visits to the health care facility was a beneficial factor of telehealth.
Patients with chronic kidney disease or transplant should have ongoing access to telehealth to help manage care, according to results of a qualitative meta-analysis.
“One group in need of telemedicine services is chronic kidney disease (CKD) and transplant patients,” Christopher D. Manko, BS, of the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine in Scranton, Pennsylvania, wrote with colleagues. They added, “[P]atients need frequent appointments to manage all related conditions. Similarly, transplant patients need close monitoring of the grafted organ and immunosuppressant therapy.” But Manko and colleagues noted that “prior systematic reviews focused on telehealth and eHealth interventions in dialysis patients have shown conflicting results with potential benefits [and] more adequately powered prospective studies are needed.”
Manko and colleagues systematically reviewed 8 articles from 6 countries to evaluate the effect of telehealth on pre-dialysis CKD and patients who have had a kidney transplant.
The selected studies, published in English-language journals in or after 2000, focused on understanding patient perspectives on telehealth in kidney disease.
Telehealth had notable strengths and weaknesses that patients revealed in the results. Researchers categorized the perceptions into the following four main themes: autonomy, logistics, privacy/confidentiality and trust. Within each theme, there were subthemes. Universally, all articles included the subtheme “fewer trips to the health care facility” as a beneficial factor of telehealth, data showed. Meanwhile, patients’ views were mixed regarding the primary themes of “privacy/confidentiality” and “trust.”
Overall, six of eight articles had positive patient perspectives on the “autonomy” theme regarding the use of telehealth to promote the subtheme of “engagement.”
“In conclusion, telemedicine offers a potential solution to help make medical appointments more accessible for CKD and transplant patients,” Mako and researchers wrote. “Future research should investigate ways to improve telemedicine use for patients such as improving autonomy, logistics, perceived privacy and confidentiality and trust.”
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