Impact of COVID‐19 outbreak on the care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease: A comparison before and after the outbreak in South China

Zhang, Ying‐Fan; Qiu, Yun; He, Jin‐Shen; Tan, Jin‐Yu; Li, Xiao‐Zhi; Zhu, Liang‐Ru; Chen, Yan; Liu, Zhan‐Ju; Iacucci, Marietta; Chen, Bai‐Li; He, Yao; Ben‐Horin, Shomron; Shen, Bo; Zeng, Zhi‐Rong; Ghosh, Subrata; Chen, Min‐Hu; Mao, Ren

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Epidemics pose a great challenge to health care of patients. However, the impact of unprecedented situation of COVID‐19 outbreak on health care of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients in real‐world setting has seldom been investigated. METHODS: We performed an observational study in a tertiary referral IBD center in China. The mode of health care and medication use was compared before and after COVID‐19 outbreak. Electronic questionnaire surveys were performed among gastroenterologists and IBD patients to investigate the impact of COVID‐19 outbreak on their attitudes towards telemedicine. RESULTS: COVID‐19 outbreak resulted in substantial decrease of patients participating in standard face‐to‐face visit during 1 month post‐outbreak (n = 51) than pre‐outbreak (n = 249), whereas the participation in telemedicine was significantly higher than comparable period in 2019 (414 vs 93). During the 1 month after COVID‐19 outbreak, 39 (39/56, 69.6%) patients had their infliximab infusion postponed with the mean delay of 3 weeks. The immunomodulator use was similar between pre‐outbreak and post‐outbreak. Six elective surgeries were postponed for a median of 43 days. In post‐outbreak period, 193 (193/297, 64.98%) of the surveyed physicians have used telemedicine with an increase of 18.9% compared with 46.13% (137/292) in the pre‐outbreak period (P < 0.001); 331 (331/505, 65.54%) of the surveyed IBD patients supported that the use of telemedicine should be increased in future health care. CONCLUSION: COVID‐19 outbreak resulted in a great change in health‐care access among IBD patients including decrease in standard face‐to‐face visit and delay of biologics use. There was an increased use and need of telemedicine after COVID‐19 outbreak.