Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-28-2023
Abstract
Background: The literature supporting telehealth management is growing accelerated by the COVID-pandemic. We hypothesize that there are risks of adverse events associated with telehealth interventions.
Methods: A review of PubMed (including MEDLINE), Embase, ISI (Web of Science), VHL/GHL, Scopus, Science Direct, and PsycINFO was conducted for all adverse events associated with telehealth from January 1, 1960 to March 1, 2021. This systematic review and meta-analyses were conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
Results: Of 5,144 citations 78 published studies met criteria for quality evaluation and underwent full text abstraction including the qualitative synthesis. Of the 78 included studies 8 were included in the quantitative synthesis resulting in 2 meta-analyses. The results of the meta-analysis suggest that monitoring patients using telehealth techniques is associated with 40% lower mortality risks among patients suffering from heart failure, compared to those who received traditional care. The results of the random-effects meta-analysis showed the pooled relative risk of mortality to be 0.60, indicating that patients that underwent telemonitoring had a lower mortality risk compared with the patients that underwent usual care. Among patients with heart implants, patients who received telemonitoring had a 35% lower mortality risk compared to patients receiving traditional care.
Conclusions: While RCTs of telehealth interventions demonstrate enhanced patient outcomes in a number of studies and pave the way to evidence-based practice, the heterogeneity of the research questions suggest an important need for more complementary studies with consistent outcome assessments.
Recommended Citation
Cascini, Fidelia; Pantovic, Ana; Al-Ajlouni, Yazan A.; Al Ta'ani, Omar; Failla, Giovanna; Melnyk, Andriy; Barach, Paul; and Ricciardi, Walter, "A Systematic Review Identifying Adverse Health Outcomes and Mortality Rates Associated with Telehealth" (2023). College of Population Health Faculty Papers. Paper 175.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/healthpolicyfaculty/175
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Language
English
Comments
This article is the author's final published version in Telehealth and Medicine Today, Volume 8, Issue 3, 2023, Article number 415.
The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.30953/thmt.v8.415. Copyright © 2023 Fidelia Cascini, MD, Ana Pantovic, MSc, Yazan A. Al-Ajlouni, MPhil, Omar Al-Ta’ani, MD, Giovanna Failla, MD, Andriy Melnyk, Paul Barach, BSC, MD, MPH, Maj, Walter Ricciardi, MD, MPH, MSc.