Telemedicine helps neuromuscular patients

(ANSA) - ROME, 19 NOV - A project dedicated to telemedicine helps patients with complex illnesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as children suffering from neuromuscular pathologies. The initiative is part of "Contactless, No Place Is Far Away", a scheme started by the Agostino Gemelli Policlinico University Foundation in Rome.
    The project emerged at the second ANSA INCONTRA session on the theme of women and neuromuscular pathologies, published on ANSA.IT. The initiative is part of the Donnenmd project, a training and information scheme promoted by Rome's Nemo clinical centre in collaboration with the Agostino Gemelli Policlinico University Irccs.
    "Families who have patients with neuromuscular diseases at home are much more afraid of COVID because the respiratory issues are very important", says Marika Pane, clinical director of the paediatric area of the Nemo Centre. "What we advise them to do is to follow the contagion prevention norms very well". "In the emergency phase, we tried to keep up life-saving, experimental and necessary therapies," Pane added. "But for chronic patients who did not have an urgent need to go to hospital, we started the project 'Contactless, No Place Is Far Away', with which we created a telemedicine service in various steps".
    "We contact the family on an app created by the Gemelli Foundation, guaranteeing our presence at a distance, according to the patients' needs and demands. Furthermore, we have created more than 80 educational videos for families in order to teach them how to do the physiotherapy," Pane went on. "We absolutely did not want our patients to feel alone, and that is why we believed this project could make them really feel close to our continual help".
    "We have activated a process of remote 'parent training'," says Daniela Chieffo, a psychologist and psychotherapist in the hospital psychology service of the Agostino Gemelli Policlinico University Irccs, as well as general psychology lecturer at the Università Cattolica. "Each time we meet the families we address specific issues. By sharing, we find a good fit with them. The ability to express one's own emotions is helping to interpret the COVID experience". (ANSA).