Experience with Obese Patients Followed via Telemedicine in a Latin American Tertiary Care Medical Center

Alejandro López, Maria Fernanda Escobar (), Alejandra Urbano, Juliana Alarcón, Laura Libreros-Peña, Diana Marcela Martinez-Ruiz and Luz Ángela Casas
Additional contact information
Alejandro López: Department of Endocrinology, Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali 760032, Colombia
Maria Fernanda Escobar: Department of Telemedicine, Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali 760032, Colombia
Alejandra Urbano: Department of Endocrinology, Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali 760032, Colombia
Juliana Alarcón: Centro de Investigaciones Clínicas, Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali 760032, Colombia
Laura Libreros-Peña: Centro de Investigaciones Clínicas, Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali 760032, Colombia
Diana Marcela Martinez-Ruiz: Centro de Investigaciones Clínicas, Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali 760032, Colombia
Luz Ángela Casas: Department of Endocrinology, Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali 760032, Colombia

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 19, 1-12

Abstract: Background: Obesity is a major public health concern worldwide. Latin America has experienced rapid growth in obesity incidence during the last few decades. Driven by confinement measures, a telemedicine program was implemented in March 2020 to give continuity to obese patients’ care through a weight loss program led by the endocrinology department in a tertiary care medical center in Latin America. Objective: This study aimed to describe the clinical experience of using digital health for monitoring and attention of obese patients and description of weight change outcomes of these patients followed via telemedicine during March 2020–December 2020. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted including 202 patients. A Skillings-Mack test was performed to conduct a subgroup analysis of the medians of the weight over the follow-up period, and a mixed multiple linear regression model was performed to estimate the expected average change in weight over time Results: We observed good adherence to the program, represented by a weight loss of −4.1 kg at three months of follow-up, which was maintained even during the sixth month of follow-up. Conclusions: Digital Health strategies such as telemedicine can be a helpful tool for both patients and health care providers to support the continuity of care and showing satisfactory results in the management of obese patients.

Keywords: obesity; telemedicine; eHealth; overweight; health care access; telehealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12406/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12406/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:19:p:12406-:d:928898

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().