Introduction

Mobile applications (“apps”) developed for smartphones and tablets are increasingly used in healthcare, allowing remote patient support or promoting self-health care. Prostate cancer (PC) screening allows for early-stage PC diagnosis, resulting in high rates of curative procedures such as radical prostatectomy. The main complications following surgery are urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction. However, the exact numbers related to these morbidities are often missing due to brief interviews during consultations in the medical office. Therefore, the aim of this study was to create an app to determine whether response rates to pre- and post-surgical PC questionnaires will increase.

Methods

The app was built using the IONIC framework system and provided to patients through a prospective randomized study. We included 100 patients divided into two groups: 1. first group used the app (n = 50); and 2. second group responded via validated printed questionnaires (control group) (n = 50). All patients received discharge counseling to respond to the questionnaires 1, 3, 6 and 12 months after the procedure. The app group received verbal guidance on how monitoring would occur, received an SMS containing a username and password providing access to the system and received reminder alerts to respond to the questionnaires.

Results

The new app is called UroHealth and is available for download in the Apple App Store or at www.urohealth.com.br. When we evaluated the response rates, we found that 42.9% of the patients answered the preoperative questionnaire in the app group, while 16% responded in the control group (p = 0.003). By the end of the follow-up, we found that 24.5% of the patients answered the questionnaire in the app group, while 4% responded in the control group (p = 0.003).

Conclusion

This app enabled almost 6 times more patients to answer long-term follow-up questions after surgical procedures, providing high-quality information regarding morbidity related to treatment. Although our initial results indicate that this app may become a useful tool in obtaining more frequent and realistic answers, thus helping to improve surgical techniques, other ways of reaching the patient should be tested to achieve higher response rates.

中文翻译：

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开发了数字应用程序来评估机器人辅助的根治性前列腺切除术后的功能结果：适用于前列腺癌的应用程序。

介绍

为智能手机和平板电脑开发的移动应用程序（“应用程序”）越来越多地用于医疗保健中，从而可以为患者提供远程支持或促进自我保健。前列腺癌（PC）筛查可以进行早期PC诊断，从而可以实现较高的治愈率，例如根治性前列腺切除术。手术后的主要并发症是尿失禁和勃起功能障碍。但是，由于在医务室进行咨询时进行了简短的访谈，因此经常缺少与这些发病率相关的确切数字。因此，本研究的目的是创建一个应用程序，以确定对手术前和手术后PC问卷的回应率是否会提高。

方法

该应用程序是使用IONIC框架系统构建的，并通过一项前瞻性随机研究提供给患者。我们将100位患者分为两组：1.第一组使用app（n  = 50）；2.第二组通过经验证的打印问卷进行答复（对照组）（n  = 50）。所有患者均在手术后1、3、6和12个月接受出院咨询以对问卷作出回应。该应用程序组收到了有关如何进行监视的口头指导，收到了包含用于访问系统的用户名和密码的SMS，并收到了提醒问卷以响应调查表。

结果

这款新应用名为UroHealth，可从Apple App Store或www.urohealth.com.br下载。在评估回应率时，我们发现app组中有42.9％的患者回答了术前问卷，而对照组中有16％的患者进行了回答（p  = 0.003）。在随访结束时，我们发现在app组中有24.5％的患者回答了问卷，而在对照组中有4％的患者进行了回答（p =  0.003）。

结论

该应用程序使手术后的患者可以接受随访的长期随访问题几乎增加了6倍，从而提供了与治疗相关的发病率的高质量信息。尽管我们的初步结果表明该应用程序可能会成为获得更频繁，更切合实际的答案的有用工具，从而有助于改善手术技术，但应测试其他与患者接触的方法，以实现更高的响应率。