Abstract
Purpose :
To evaluated the potential of the mobile phone application, WeChat, to increase patient compliance in attendance of follow-up after pediatric cataract treatment.
Methods :
Retrospective cohort study. A total of 163 pediatric cataract patients with uneventful surgery were included. According to their follow-up intervention method, patients were divided into the 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 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. In addition, the compliance of refractive correction was significantly improved in the WeChat group (79.17% vs. 55.56%, p = 0.009 and 74.36% vs. 44.9%, p = 0.0054).
Conclusions :
This study demonstrates that the use of WeChat can significantly improve follow-up attendance after pediatric cataract treatment.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.