For a study, researchers sought to ascertain the absence of a pre-procedure genitourinary exam during a virtual consultation affected the chance that an in-person vasectomy would be effective. Although COVID-19 has sped up virtual consultations at many institutions, the AUA Vasectomy guidelines still recommend in-person examinations wherever feasible. They predicted that there would be no discernible difference in the percentage of patients who successfully had an office consultation vasectomy between those who underwent an exam and those who were only observed.
A size-matched, randomly chosen control group that attended in-office vasectomy consultations from April to December 2020 was retrospectively examined and contrasted with the virtual vasectomy consultations. The in-office bilateral vasectomy was completed as the main result. The demographic baselines were contrasted. Fisher’s exact test and the Student’s t-test were used to comparing categorical and continuous variables.
In-office vasectomy was requested by 153 of the 211 patients who had virtual vasectomy counseling throughout the research period. The 153 vasectomies from the cohort of in-person consultations were compared to them. There were no noticeable demographic variations between the in-person and online consult groups. The completion rates of in-office vasectomy were 97.4% (149/153) in the virtual consult group and 98.7% (151/153) in the in-office consultation cohort (P=.68), showing no statistically significant difference.
The rates of completed in-office vasectomy remained relatively the same depending on the consulting platform, indicating that a physical examination before the treatment is unnecessary to determine if it would be effective. In a youthful and active population, telehealth should be used as an extra platform to increase access to male contraceptive methods.
Reference: goldjournal.net/article/S0090-4295(22)00517-9/fulltext
