ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused some negative results in the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients with cardiac and non-cardiac chronic diseases. In this period, new technological methods have been developed in the management of chronic diseases, and large-scale randomized studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the applications.
A total of 564 patients with a mean age of 47.5±15.5, 55.5% of whom were women, were included in this pre-study. 54.08% of the patients (n=305) stated that their routine hospital controls were disrupted during the pandemic period. It was determined that 4.9% of those who expressed their anxiety level as excessive or high, and 1.5% of those who stated it as moderate-less or not developed COVID-19 infection (p=0.038). Regarding the telemedicine method, which was performed by providing remote physician support during the pandemic period, 286 (50.71%) of the participants had the idea that it was a very useful, 262 (46.45%) useful, and 16 (2.84%) unnecessary application.
In this study, a multiple-choice questionnaire consisting of 23 questions was sent to individuals with chronic disease (n=564) under medical follow-up via the SurveyMonkey online statistics program. The chi-square test was used to investigate whether the distributions of categorical variables differed within the groups. Comparisons between groups were made with the Mann-Whitney U test. A value of p<0.05 was considered statistically significant.
During the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there have been some problems in the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of people with chronic diseases, especially cardiac diseases. In this study, which aims to examine the effects of the pandemic, which negatively affects the whole world, in this context, the conditions of the patients in this period were examined with a multiplechoice questionnaire. As a result, situations such as the problems experienced and the management of patients with new methods such as telemedicine have been revealed.
