Evolución de pacientes con COVID-19 monitorizados por teleconsulta de medicina interna

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic constituted a great challenge, but at the same time a great opportunity for the development of digital health and telemedicine in Latin America. Health information and communication technologies are important tools for prevention and health promotion and a support for clinical practice. Objective: To evaluate the evolution of patients affected with COVID-19 monitored by internal medicine teleconsultation. Methods: An observational, descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective, retrospective study was conducted with 85 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from June 2020 to December 2021 in the city of Trujillo, Peru. All data were taken from medical records. Results: The most frequent ages were 48 to 57 years (38.8 %), the most frequent sex was male (23.5 %), among the comorbidities, hypertension predominated (38.8 %) and the most prevalent symptoms were fever, odynophagia and dry cough (82.3 %). The 83.5 % of patients maintained normal oxygen saturation values and 97.6 % had a satisfactory evolution. Conclusions: Most of the patients monitored remotely had a satisfactory evolution and the internal medicine teleconsultation proved to be an alternative to be recommended in times of pandemic, when the overcrowded health institutions are not able to treat all patients and it is also a way to avoid contagion.