Quality comparison of remote anesthetic consultation versus on-site consultation in children with sedation for a magnetic resonance imaging examination-A randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND

In the course of the corona pandemic, digital media has increasingly been used in many areas of medical practice to reduce personal contact. As it is of interest whether this can be practiced in the context of anesthesia consultations without loss of quality, we interviewed parents whose children received a cardiac or neuro magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) under sedation. Parents either received an on-site or a remote consultation conducted by an anesthesiologist. Both parents and anesthesiologist were asked to indicate their satisfaction with the respective consultation procedure in a questionnaire.

AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate if remote pre-anesthesia consultation, supported by an online video, for parents whose children are receiving MRI examinations under sedation can replace the commonly performed on-site consultation, without decreasing its quality.

METHODS

In this randomized trial, a total of 200 patients were included, one half received pre-anesthesia consultation on-site and the other half was given a link to a video and pre-anesthesia consultation was conducted by phone. As a primary analysis, we compared the level of satisfaction for the general procedure, the quality of the pre-anesthesia consultation and the contact to the anesthesiologists (or parents). We further investigated the frequency of complications and the preference for a possible next informed consent.

RESULTS

Both groups showed high levels of satisfaction. Some anesthesiologists and parents were less satisfied with the quality of on-site pre-anesthesia consultation than with the remote. In our patient cohort, there was no evidence for higher risk of complications when information was provided by telephone. Further, parents as well as anesthesiologists clearly favored the combined form of telephone information and online video. Overall, 61.2% of parents and 64% of anesthesiologists would choose this form of pre-anesthesia consultation for repeat anesthesia.

CONCLUSIONS

We did not observe that combined telephone and video decreased the quality of pre-anesthesia consultation. A remote version seems feasible for simple procedures such as sedation for MRI. Further research on this topic in other areas of anesthesia would be beneficial.