Abstract
Background
To describe the clinical outcomes following implementation of a high-volume medical retina virtual clinic utilising a diagnostic hub.
Methods
Retrospective consecutive case-series of all patients attending the medical retina virtual clinics at Moorfields Eye Hospital (City Road) for 6 weeks from September 21, 2020.
Results
In 6 weeks, 1006 patients attended the medical retina virtual clinics, which included an appointment in the diagnostic hub followed by an assessment asynchronously the following working day. The vast majority of patients were follow-up attendances (969, 96.3%) with much fewer new patient attendances (37, 3.7%). The most common diagnoses made overall were diabetic retinopathy (457, 45.4%), age-related macular degeneration (208, 20.7%) and retinal vein occlusion (80, 8.0%). The majority of patient (643, 63.9%) outcomes were follow-up in the medical retina virtual clinics including 313 (31.1%) with OCT-only pathway and 330 (32.8%) with OCT and widefield fundus imaging. Routine follow-up requested after virtual assessment included 320 (31.8%) with a 3–4 month review and 267 (26.5%) with a 6 months assessment. Only 62 patients (6.2%) were asked to return for face-to-face assessment within 2 weeks.
Conclusions
We describe a new high-volume medical retina virtual clinic utilising a diagnostic hub in which more than 1000 patients were seen and assessed asynchronously. Most patients were assessed as suitable for routine follow-up in this virtual pathway and only a small proportion required urgent reviews (within 2 weeks). In the COVID-19 era, this form of high-volume virtual clinic has the potential to review patients efficiently and safely.
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Acknowledgements
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The Moorfields Medial Retina Virtual Assessment Study Group
Peter KF Addison1, Sobha Sivaprasad1, Deepthy Menon1, Barsha Sarma1, Virinder Dhillon1, Najiha Rahman1, Rajasudha Sawri-rajan1, Lucia Finocchio1, Panteleimon Fotiou1, Ricardo Romero Fontenlos1, Sandra Vermeirsch1, Aditi Agarwal1, Hagar Khalid1, Janice Roth1, Supawat Trepatchayakom1, Maria Pilar Martin-Gutierrez1, Marcela Bohn De Albuquerque Alves1, Katarina Hurtikova1, Dana Ahnood1, Nashila Hirji1, Rajna Rasheed1, Eleftherios Agorogiannis1, Ling Zhi Heng1, Sofia Ajamil1, Assaf Rozenberg1, Stacey Strong1, Bahar Demir1, Carlos Valdes Lara1, Cristina Arpa1, Saqlain Sadiq1, Konstantinos Bouras1, Alexandra Hoeh1, Gabriela Grimaldi1, Karla Orsine Murta Dias1, Bejal Shah1, Senthil Selvam1, Daren Hanumunthadu1, Elizabeth Yang1, Karen Wong1, Charles Hennings1, Rohan Hussain1, Malgorzata Woronkowicz1
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LN and DH designed the study, collected the study data, completed the analysis and wrote the manuscript; LN also provided critical appraisal of the manuscript. KT, KB, RH and KA designed the study and provided critical appraisal of the manuscript. The Moorfields Medical Retina Virtual Assessment Study Group helped collect study data
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Members of the The Moorfields Medical Retina Virtual Assessment Study Group are listed below Acknowledgements.
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Hanumunthadu, D., Adan, K., Tinkler, K. et al. Outcomes following implementation of a high-volume medical retina virtual clinic utilising a diagnostic hub during COVID-19. Eye 36, 627–633 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-021-01510-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-021-01510-4
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