Endocrine Abstracts

Background: The COVID19 pandemic greatly affected the delivery of outpatient clinics. Tier 3 specialist weight management services (SWMS) aim to help obese patients lose weight through holistic lifestyle modification delivered by a multidisciplinary team consisting of specialist physicians, dieticians, physiotherapists, psychologists, and support workers. Prior to the pandemic, the service was delivered mainly through in person consultations. The nature of the pandemic necessitated a switch to virtual consultation. We hypothesise that this change may have negatively affected the success and efficacy of the service.

Aim: To determine the extent of the impact COVID19 and the change from in person to virtual consultations had on the efficacy of our SWMS.

Methods: Data from two 6-month periods was collected retrospectively from case notes. The first period was October 2018 – March 2019 (pre-COVID19 group) and the second was March – August 2020 (COVID19 group). All consecutive patients initiated from a single centre were included for analysis. Outcome measures were percentage of patients >5% weight loss, percentage of patients >10% weight loss, and length of time spent under care of our service.

Results: 71 patients were initiated in the pre-COVID19 group and 76 patients in the COVID19 group. Average age was 46.1 and 41.4 years for pre-COVID19 and COVID19 respectively. Both groups were mainly female (85.9% pre-COVID19, 75% COVID19). Percentage of patients with >5% weight loss was not significantly different between groups (30% pre-COVID19, 36% COVID19). Percentage of patients with >10% weight loss was significantly different (6.7% pre-COVID19, 15.3% COVID19). Length of time under care was not significantly different between groups (417 days pre-COVID19, 436 days COVID19).

Conclusion: COVID19 and the switch to virtual consultations did not worsen the performance of our SWMS.