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

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.