Educational Video on the WeChat Platform Can Effectively Improve the Quality of Bowel Preparation

Abstract

Bowel preparation is a core issue in the quality of colonoscopy. We attempted to investigate whether an educational video via WeChat (a widely used mobile social media app) improved the compliance of patients and quality of bowel preparation. We enrolled 198 colonoscopy patients aged 35–70 years. They were randomly divided into the WeChat group (100 cases) and the control group (98 cases). The outcomes were the compliance of patients in the bowel preparation process and quality of the bowel preparation according to the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale. Participants' compliance increased markedly in the WeChat group compared with the control group (P < 0.01). The total Boston Bowel Preparation Scale score was significantly higher in the WeChat group than in the control group (7.02 ± 1.75 vs. 6.45 ± 1.91, respectively, p < .05). The intubation time (minutes) of colonoscopy in the WeChat group was shorter than that in the control group (7.38 ± 1.37 vs. 7.88 ± 1.39, respectively, p < .05). Our data confirmed that an educational video via WeChat can improve the quality of bowel preparation. It can also increase the compliance of bowel preparation and shorten the intubation time of colonoscopy.

Impact of Patient Education via WeChat on Bowel Preparation for Colonoscopy

“…The four included studies all used an internationally standardized bowel preparation quality assessment scale to evaluate the quality of bowel preparation. Three studies used the BBPS, 14–16 and the heterogeneity test showed no significant heterogeneity ( P = .24, I 2 = 29%). Therefore, the fixed effects model was used for the combined analysis.…”

“…One study used the WeChat public number for bowel preparation education and automatically pushed multimedia messages with detailed information to patients' WeChat app 2 days before the colonoscopy 16 . The other provided an educational video of approximately 8 minutes in duration via WeChat platform 15 . Three included studies used the BBPS to evaluate the quality of bowel preparation, 14–16 and the other study used the OBPS 13 (Table 1).…”

“…The other provided an educational video of approximately 8 minutes in duration via WeChat platform 15 . Three included studies used the BBPS to evaluate the quality of bowel preparation, 14–16 and the other study used the OBPS 13 (Table 1).…”

“…After the titles and abstracts of the papers were screened, the remaining eight papers were retrieved for further assessment. Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, four randomized controlled trials were finally included in the meta-analysis [13][14][15][16] (Figures 1 and 2). The four included studies were all conducted in China after 2014 and had a total of 1126 patients in the WeChat group and 1115 patients in the control group.…”

“…All four of the included studies evaluated patient compliance with bowel preparation. [13][14][15][16] The compliance of the patients in the WeChat group was significantly better than that of the patients in the control group in terms of dietary instructions, purgative instructions, and the amount of purgative ingested ( P < .01) (see Supplemental Digital Content 3, http://links. lww.com/CIN/A158), suggesting that patients had better bowel preparation compliance after receiving enhanced education via WeChat.…”