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Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated government-imposed restrictions on social interactions and travel. For many, the guidance has led to new ways of working, most notably a shift towards working remotely. While eye care practitioners (ECPs) may continue to provide urgent or emergency eye care, in...

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Autores principales: Nagra, Manbir, Vianya-Estopa, Marta, Wolffsohn, James S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: British Contact Lens Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7165279/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32336578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clae.2020.04.002
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author Nagra, Manbir
Vianya-Estopa, Marta
Wolffsohn, James S.
author_facet Nagra, Manbir
Vianya-Estopa, Marta
Wolffsohn, James S.
author_sort Nagra, Manbir
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated government-imposed restrictions on social interactions and travel. For many, the guidance has led to new ways of working, most notably a shift towards working remotely. While eye care practitioners (ECPs) may continue to provide urgent or emergency eye care, in many cases the travel restrictions present a unique challenge by preventing conventional face-to-face examination. Telephone triage provides a useful starting point for establishing at-risk and emergency patients; but patient examination is central to contact lens patient care. The indeterminate period over which conventional practice will be suspended, and the risk that resumption of ‘normal’ practice could be impeded by a potential secondary peak in COVID-19 cases, hastens the need for practitioners to adapt their delivery of eyecare. Specifically, it is prudent to reflect upon supportive evidence for more comprehensive approaches to teleoptometry in contact lens practice. Smartphone based ocular imaging is an area which has seen considerable growth, particularly for imaging the posterior eye. Smartphone imaging of the anterior eye requires additional specialised instrumentation unlikely to be available to patients at home. Further, there is only limited evidence for self-administered image capture. In general, digital photographs, are useful for detection of gross anterior eye changes, but subtle changes are less discernible. For the assessment of visual acuity, many electronic test charts have been validated for use by practitioners. Research into self-administered visual acuity measures remains limited. The absence of a comprehensive evidence base for teleoptometry limits ECPs, particularly during this pandemic. Knowledge gaps ought to be addressed to facilitate development of optometry specific evidence-based guidance for telecare. In particular, advances in ocular self-imaging could help move this field forwards.
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spelling pubmed-71652792020-04-20 Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic? Nagra, Manbir Vianya-Estopa, Marta Wolffsohn, James S. Cont Lens Anterior Eye Article The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated government-imposed restrictions on social interactions and travel. For many, the guidance has led to new ways of working, most notably a shift towards working remotely. While eye care practitioners (ECPs) may continue to provide urgent or emergency eye care, in many cases the travel restrictions present a unique challenge by preventing conventional face-to-face examination. Telephone triage provides a useful starting point for establishing at-risk and emergency patients; but patient examination is central to contact lens patient care. The indeterminate period over which conventional practice will be suspended, and the risk that resumption of ‘normal’ practice could be impeded by a potential secondary peak in COVID-19 cases, hastens the need for practitioners to adapt their delivery of eyecare. Specifically, it is prudent to reflect upon supportive evidence for more comprehensive approaches to teleoptometry in contact lens practice. Smartphone based ocular imaging is an area which has seen considerable growth, particularly for imaging the posterior eye. Smartphone imaging of the anterior eye requires additional specialised instrumentation unlikely to be available to patients at home. Further, there is only limited evidence for self-administered image capture. In general, digital photographs, are useful for detection of gross anterior eye changes, but subtle changes are less discernible. For the assessment of visual acuity, many electronic test charts have been validated for use by practitioners. Research into self-administered visual acuity measures remains limited. The absence of a comprehensive evidence base for teleoptometry limits ECPs, particularly during this pandemic. Knowledge gaps ought to be addressed to facilitate development of optometry specific evidence-based guidance for telecare. In particular, advances in ocular self-imaging could help move this field forwards. British Contact Lens Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2020-06 2020-04-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7165279/ /pubmed/32336578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clae.2020.04.002 Text en © 2020 British Contact Lens Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Nagra, Manbir
Vianya-Estopa, Marta
Wolffsohn, James S.
Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic?
title Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic?
title_full Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic?
title_fullStr Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic?
title_full_unstemmed Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic?
title_short Could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the COVID-19 pandemic?
title_sort could telehealth help eye care practitioners adapt contact lens services during the covid-19 pandemic?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7165279/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32336578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clae.2020.04.002
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