Efficacy of Telehealth in Preoperative Pediatric Surgery Consultations

Introduction: The Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic created a sudden need to transition outpatient pediatric surgical care to a telehealth platform, allotting little time to study the effi-cacy of these changes. In particular, the accuracy of telehealthpreoperative assessment remains unclear. Therefore, we sought to study the prevalence of errors in diagnosis and procedure cancellations between preoperative in-person evaluations and telehealth evaluations.Methods: We conducted a single institution, retrospective chart review of perioperative medical records at a tertiary children's hospital over a 2-year period. Data included patient demographics (age, sex, county, primary language, and insurance), preoperative diagnosis, postoperative diagnosis, and surgical cancellation rates. Data were analyzed using Fisher's exact and chi-square tests. Alpha was set at 0.05.Results: A total of 523 patients were analyzed, with 445 in-person visits and 78 telehealth visits. There were no demographic differences between the in-person and telehealth co-horts. The frequency of changes from the preoperative to the postoperative diagnosis was not significantly different between in-person preoperative visits and telehealth preopera-tive visits (0.99% versus 1.41%, P = 0.557). The frequency of case cancellations between the two consultation modalities was not significantly different (9.44% versus 8.97%, P = 0.899).Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that preoperative pediatric surgical consultations held via telehealth were neither associated with a decrease in the accuracy of preoperative diagnosis, nor an increased rate of surgery cancellations, compared to those held in -person. Further study is needed to better determine the advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of telehealth in the delivery of pediatric surgical care.(c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.