key: cord-0790335-8h2wioog
authors: Sallam, Aminah
title: Author's response to Verma et al. letter to the editor regarding “Telemedicine in the era of coronavirus 19: Implications for postoperative care in cardiac surgery”
date: 2021-10-04
journal: J Card Surg
DOI: 10.1111/jocs.16047
sha: 0c521003655818d1e7c314a0df31d8a355826940
doc_id: 790335
cord_uid: 8h2wioog

nan

: Implications for postoperative care in cardiac surgery. 1 " While some concerns were raised, areas of consensus were also highlighted. Below, I will directly respond to the concerns raised, summarize areas of consensus, and propose future research directions.

The main concern relates to our lack of control group which may introduce lesser quality evidence and sampling bias. Indeed, this is a limitation we highlighted ourselves in the conclusions of our paper. As previously explained, nonurgent inpatient visits at our institution were limited to encourage social distancing and reduce the risk of COVID-19 exposure for our patients. Thus, due to the ongoing pandemic, it was impossible to introduce a control group of inpatient visits at the time of our study.

Another concern highlighted in their letter was the presence of interviewer bias and possible recall bias impacting survey findings and limiting internal validity. In this, we also agree, as these limitations were highlighted in the conclusions of our paper. While it would have been preferable to administer personal copies of the survey to each patient to fill out privately and individually at the time of their appointment, we were unable to do so via email because the demographic of cardiac surgery patients skew to a much older age group without active email addresses to send a personalized survey online. Moreover, because visits were done remotely, there was no way to administer a paper survey in person and ensure a timely response. Given the lack of any published data on the use of telemedicine in this population, we aimed to provide a timely assessment of its efficacy within the boundaries set by the ongoing pandemic and efforts to socially distance. In conclusion, I am pleased that my review has ignited some healthy academic discourse and hope that researchers interested in the implementation of telemedicine in the cardiac surgery population will benefit from the perspectives presented. To the extent that future research can address the issues discussed here, the scientific quality of research into the utility of telemedicine in the cardiac surgery population as well as its clinical relevance, uptake, and dissemination will continue to improve.

Telemedicine in the era of coronavirus 19: Implications for postoperative care in cardiac surgery