Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Methodol. Jul 20, 2022; 12(4): 285-292
Published online Jul 20, 2022. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v12.i4.285
Telehealth has comparable outcomes to in-person diabetic foot care during the COVID-19 pandemic
Nikolaos Kamaratos-Sevdalis, Alexandros Kamaratos, Marios Papadakis, Christos Tsagkaris
Nikolaos Kamaratos-Sevdalis, Alexandros Kamaratos, Christos Tsagkaris, Diabetic Foot Clinic, Diabetes Center and 1st Department of Internal Medicine, Tzaneio General Hospital of Piraeus, Piraeus 18536, Greece
Marios Papadakis, Surgery II, University of Witten-Herdecke, Wuppertal 42283, Germany
Author contributions: Kamaratos-Sevdalis N co-performed literature search, performed the majority of the writing, and prepared the figures and tables; Kamaratos A and Papadakis M provided input in searching the literature and writing the paper; and Tsagkaris C designed the outline, co-performed literature search and coordinated the writing of the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Marios Papadakis, MD, MSc, PhD, Consultant Physician-Scientist, Doctor, Research Scientist, Surgery II, University of Witten-Herdecke, Heusnerstrasse 40, Wuppertal 42283, Germany. marios_papadakis@yahoo.gr
Received: February 9, 2022
Peer-review started: February 9, 2022
First decision: April 12, 2022
Revised: May 19, 2022
Accepted: July 11, 2022
Article in press: July 11, 2022
Published online: July 20, 2022
Processing time: 160 Days and 20.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Telehealth has a major potential to sustain and improve diabetic foot care during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Studies reporting the experience of healthcare providers and patients around the globe are encouraging. These findings need to be validated with larger and long – term studies. In the post COVID era, the knowledge and experience obtained can serve as the standpoint of a hybrid approach of telemedicine and in-person care oriented towards delivering fast, efficient and cost-effective care to the patients.