Managing childhood obesity: teleconsultation as good as routine care

Bharat Saboo; Aniket Inamdar; Shweta Saboo; Dhruvi Hasnani; Vipul Chavda

doi:10.1530/endoabs.99.EP952

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Endocrine Abstracts (2024) 99 EP952 | DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.99.EP952

ECE2024 Eposter Presentations Diabetes, Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition (383 abstracts)

Managing childhood obesity: teleconsultation as good as routine care

Bharat Saboo ¹ , Aniket Inamdar ² , Shweta Saboo ³ , Dhruvi Hasnani ⁴ & Vipul Chavda ⁵

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¹Prayas Diabetes Center, Metabolic health, Indore, India; ²Samarpan clinic, Omerga, India; ³Prayas Diabetes Center, Indore, India; ⁴Rudraksha Institute of Medical Sciences, Ahmedabad, India; ⁵Rudraksha institute of medical sciences, Ahmedabad, India

We all know that care delivery can become too much exhaustive and regular follow-up by patients in not maintained in India due to various reasons. This study aimed to compare the long-term effects of tele consultation (TC) and routine care (RC) on the weight status of children with obesity. Patients aged 5-14 years from the OPD, India were assigned to either TC or RC for 6 months after completing a standard obesity treatment programme during the period of march 2022 to July 2022. They were followed up for an average of 1 year. The study included 32 children (TC, n=16 and RC, n=16) with a mean (SD) age of 12.8 (3.5) years and a BMI SDS of 3.8 (0.4). There was no significant difference in BMI SDS change between the groups during the study (P=0.7) or at 1.5 years after the first clinic visit, TC = - 0.54 and RC = 0.57 BMI SDS units (P=0.7). Gender did not affect the results. The groups also did not differ in the average time spent by caregiver per patient during the study (P=0.6). All patients completed the follow-up. The study concluded that TC was as effective and efficient as RC in treating paediatric obesity and could provide more flexibility for patients and healthcare providers. Also in a resource crunched country like India it can be of a great help to provide optimum healthcare. More work in this area is needed.