Methods
Retrospective analysis was conducted on all new adult and paediatric patients reviewed in the outpatient OHNS clinic since the State of Emergency announced by the Australian Victorian State Government on 15th March 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic until 15th October 2020 (7 months). Ethics approval was obtained from the <blinded for review>.
All new patients of all ages referred for any OHNS condition was included in this study. Patients who did not have both a telephone and face-to-face appointment, with the telephone appointment being their first OHNS clinic appointment were excluded from the study. All patients were reviewed in a consultant OHNS clinic.
Data collected include patient demographics, language spoken, distance from hospital, referred OHNS condition, telephone appointment diagnosis and proposed treatment, number of investigations requested, as well as physical appointment findings, diagnosis and proposed treatment. Intra-operative findings were collected for patients who had undergone a surgical procedure. The number of clinical encounters as well as the date between a patient’s referral until their definitive treatment decision were also determined.
Statistical analysis was performed using Prism (version 8.0, GraphPad). Descriptive data were reported as medians and interquartile ranges. Differences were analysed using the Mann-Whitney U test, with statistical significance defined as a p-value of less than 0.05 (Table 2).