The Role of Virtual Clinics in Postoperative Total Knee Replacement Surgery Follow-Up during COVID-19 Pandemic

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of the virtual clinic for outpatient follow-up care after TKR surgery. METHODS: A total of 546 TKR surgeries were performed from January 2017 to December 2019. 30 patients were not able to go the hospital for routine follow-up. The data collections were taken for age, gender, year of surgery, functional score (Oxford Knee Score (OKS)), and active range of motion (ROM). The virtual clinic was conducted with the physician assistant and the operating surgeon via WhatsApp video call (WhatsApp Inc., Mountain View, California, USA) or Zoom (Zoom Video Communications, Inc., San Jose, California, USA). RESULT: The average follow-up period was 39.1 months. The earliest follow-up was 20 months, while the longest follow-up was 97 months. The average OKS score was 45. The average consultation time for the virtual clinic is 9 minutes 21 seconds. Most of the patients were satisfied with the online consultation, with only two patients having a satisfaction score below 80%. CONCLUSION: The virtual clinic for TKR surgery showed a high satisfaction rate during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has the potential to extend to the postpandemic era.