E-Health and Liver Cirrhosis Management: Before and After Covid-19 Outbreak

Abstract

Background:

Patients with cirrhosis need multi-dimensional care, coordinated care for their drugs, vaccinations and laboratory monitoring, scheduling of screening endoscopy, and imaging. However, with the advent of covid-19, these processes have been disrupted.

Aim

The aim of this study was to review the applications of heath information technology in the management of liver cirrhosis before and after the outbreak of COVID-19.

Materials and Methods:

This review study was performed without time limitation by searching ProQuest, PubMed, Science Direct databases, and Google Scholar. The study steps include identifying research objectives and defining search strategy, identifying relevant research articles, selecting research articles, extracting data, summarizing, discussing, analyzing, and reporting results.

Results:

Finally, seven articles related to the pre-epidemic of COVID-19 and two post-epidemic articles were selected and analyzed in the related tables. The results show that the used technologies have benefits such as disease improvement, prevention of disease complications and providing routine services such as virtual visits, counseling, prescribing and reminding of drug doses and also effective potential in diseases management by maintaining social distancing and preventing the spread of infection in the period before and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Conclusions:  

The prevalence of COVID-19 epidemic is an opportunity to use information technology capabilities to manage patients with liver cirrhosis. Telehealth service providers consider that a favorable way to better management of liver cirrhosis, especially during an epidemic. IT-based approaches provide specialized liver and gastrointestinal services for all patients, regardless of distance.