Self Perceived Health Status, Medical Care Seeking Behaviour And The Preference of Telemedicine among NonCommunicable Disease Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown Period

Abstract

Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a highly transmittable and pathogenic viral
infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2). Methodology:
A cross-sectional study was done to ascertain the self-perceived health status, medical care seeking
behaviour and the preference of telemedicine among non communicable disease (NCD) patients who
did not come for their periodic review during the COVID lockdown period in Kerala state of India.
Results: The mean age of the study population was 62.42±12.8 years and the mean duration of the
non communicable disease (NCD) were 6.6±7.8 years. 49.1%of the study participants did not come
for review to the hospital due to fear of contracting COVID-19 and 35.6% due to lack of conveyance.
On analyzing the association between the fear of COVID-19 with various factors, age was found to
be of significant association Conclusion: The study showed that majority of the patients did not come
for review to the hospital due to fear of contracting COVID-19 and owing to lack of conveyance
during lockdown period.Patients who opted for telemedicine 60% showed willingness to continue with
telemedicine in future.