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).