Telehealth may be equivalent to in-person follow-up after arthroscopic meniscal surgery
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Patient satisfaction with overall care following arthroscopic meniscal repair was equivalent between telehealth and traditional office-based follow-ups, according to study results.
Investigators at NYU Langone Health prospectively analyzed 122 patients who consented to either isolated arthroscopic meniscal repair or meniscectomy from Aug. 1, 2019 to March 1, 2020. According to the study, investigators assigned 69 patients to traditional in-office follow-up and 53 patients to telehealth follow-up done with synchronous face-to-face video on a computer, tablet or smartphone.
After two one-sided t-test analysis, researchers found patient satisfaction with overall care was equivalent in both follow-up modalities (9.77 in the office-based group vs. 9.79 in the telehealth group). Additionally, 84.1% (n = 58) of patients in office-based group and 79.2% (n =42) of patients the telehealth group preferred their respective follow-up modality. Investigators noted no difference in complications between the cohorts.
“Telemedicine has increasingly been considered as a viable alternative to traditional office-based health care, including postoperative follow-up visits,” the investigators wrote in the study.
For patients who undergo arthroscopic meniscal repair, telehealth “should be considered a reasonable alternative to the traditional in-office modality,” they added.
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