COVID has caused many changes in our day to day lives, with freedom and services intermittently restricted as the infection rates surge and abate.
This pattern has also been evident in our healthcare system as we have previously reported to you. A UK on-line survey in 2020 of 125 hospitals (Kennedy et al. Frontline Gastroenterology) showed that 35% of hospitals reported all IBD related endoscopy had been cancelled, but most reported a significant reduction in availability.
At the same time 27% of locations reported no access to faecal calprotectin whilst a further 32% reported reduced access. This was for a variety of reasons, including concerns over infectivity of COVID from stool samples, lack of access to cabinets for safe handling, increased workload from COVID, staff shortages in labs and calprotectin being defined as a non-critical assay by the RCPath, IBMS, ACP and ACB.
This left many gastroenterologists without the critical tools they normally employed to manage their IBD patients. During this time, many hospitals implemented new systems to support their patients in a rather stressful time.
Introducing IBDoc Calprotectin Patient Self-Testing
The Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow was one of the hospitals that introduced the IBDoc calprotectin patient self-test during this time. The team there has recently published a paper about their experience (Jere et al. BMJ2).
