Purpose: To evaluate the potential of the smartphone application assisted medical service to increase patient compliance in attendance of follow-up after pediatric cataract treatment.
Methods: This prospective study enrolled a total of 163 pediatric cataract patients with uneventful surgery. According to their follow-up intervention method, patients were divided into the smartphone application assisted medical service group (WeChat group, 75 patients) or control group (88 patients). Attendance at five follow-up appointments after surgery was recorded. The percentage of patients that attend each follow-up appointment and the compliance of refractive correction were assessed.
Results: Although no significant difference was observed in the first appointment comparing the two groups (98.7% vs. 94.3%, p = 0.293), the attendance rates at the other appointments of the WeChat group were significantly higher than the control group (second: 98.7% vs. 89.8%, third: 97.3% vs. 83%, fourth: 93.3% vs. 78.4%, fifth: 80% vs. 56.8%, total: 93.6% vs. 80.5%, respectively). Compared with the control group, the odd ratios for adherence improvement were 4.4 for males (95% confidence index [CI] 2.54-7.65), 4.75 for patients more than 2 years old (95% CI 2.41-9.36), 4.19 for intraocular lens implantation (2.29-7.66), 6.93 for unilateral cataract (2.9-16.52), 4.87 for undeveloped cities (2.74-8.65), and 3.49 for cities far away (2.04-5.96), with all the p < 0.0001.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the use of smartphone application assisted medical service can significantly improve follow-up attendance after pediatric cataract treatment.
Keywords: Follow-up; Medical service; Pediatric cataract; Smartphone application; WeChat.