Telemedicine has been widely implemented during the COVID-19 global pandemic to enable continuity of care of chronic illnesses. We modified our general neurology clinic to be conducted using remote audio-only telephone consultations. We included all patients over a 10-week period who agreed to both a telephone consultation and a questionnaire afterwards in order to ascertain the patient's perspective of the experience. There were 212 participants consisting of men (43.8%) and women (56.2%). The mean ± standard deviation of age was 47.8 ± 17.0 (range 17–93) years. For the most part, patients found remote consultations either “just as good” (67.1%) or “better” (9.0%) than face-to-face consultations. Those who deemed it to be “not as good” were significantly older (52.3 ± 17.9 years vs. 46.6 ± 16.6 years, p =0.045) or were more likely to have a neurological disorder that required clinical examination, namely, a neuromuscular condition (66.7%, p = 0.002) or an undiagnosed condition (46.7%, p = 0.031). At the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic, most patients were satisfied with remote consultations. The positive feedback for remote consultations needs to be verified outside of this unique scenario because the results were likely influenced by the patients' apprehension to attend the hospital amongst other factors.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 大流行期间患者的远程神经科会诊体验

在 COVID-19 全球大流行期间，远程医疗已被广泛实施，以实现慢性病护理的连续性。我们修改了我们的普通神经病学诊所，以使用远程纯音频电话咨询进行。我们纳入了 10 周内同意接受电话咨询和事后问卷调查的所有患者，以确定患者对体验的看法。共有 212 名参与者，包括男性 (43.8%) 和女性 (56.2%)。年龄的平均值 ± 标准差为 47.8 ± 17.0（范围 17-93）岁。在大多数情况下，患者发现远程咨询比面对面咨询“同样好”（67.1%）或“更好”（9.0%）。那些认为“不那么好”的人明显年龄更大（52.3 ± 17.9 岁 vs. 46.6 ± 16.6 岁，p = 0。045) 或更可能患有需要临床检查的神经系统疾病，即神经肌肉疾病 (66.7%, p = 0.002) 或未确诊的疾病 (46.7%, p = 0.031)。在 COVID-19 全球大流行的高峰期，大多数患者对远程咨询感到满意。远程会诊的积极反馈需要在这种独特情况之外进行验证，因为结果可能受到患者对去医院的担忧等因素的影响。