Introduction/Aims
Telephone consultations have been used extensively in healthcare even prior to the pandemic for over 20 years particularly in primary care, where clinicians can remotely monitor chronic conditions. During the recent Covid-19 Pandemic, it was recommended that previously performed face to face consultations for NHS patients should be converted to telemedicine consultations to reduce the risk to staff and patients.
We retrospectively examined the records of telephone consultations for all Two Week Wait (2WW) referrals to the head and neck cancer team at a University Hospital between March 2020 and March 2021
Materials and Methods
A list of all telephone consultations undertaken by the Head and Neck team at University Hospital, Coventry from March 2020 to March 2021 was obtained.
Following a telephone consultation, patients considered high risk were investigated further as potential malignancies with urgent F2F examinations or referral for further diagnostic imaging.
There were no exclusion criteria.
Results/Statistics
A total of 957 records were identified.
74% (708/957) of patients referred through the two week wait pathway were identified to be higher risk and required further investigation. 58% (555/957) of patients required urgent F2F appointments for further assessment and 27% (258/957) of patients were referred for imaging as a result of their telephone consultation.
Conclusions/Clinical Relevance
Our study reveals that in the context of suspected head and neck cancer referrals there are many deficiencies with this approach and that patients will require a thorough examination in person, and therefore we propose that Head and neck cancer 2WW clinics should continue in a F2F manner.