| Popis: |
Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic has an impact on daily life as well as fertility care Evidence supports the notion that infertility causes substantial emotional distress and has a significant impact on a person’s quality of life The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on experiencing emotional distress in subfertile patients compared with their pre pandemic situation are unclear In this study the impact of the restrictive consequences of COVID-19 in terms of emotional distress and infertility related quality of life is investigated, by comparing the pre pandemic emotional distress in a cohort of men and women at time of the first consultation in our fertility clinic with distress and quality of life during the COVID-19 pandemic Design: An online questionnaire study regarding couples with an indication for IVF, whose treatment was, due to the restrictive measures of the COVID-19 pandemic, interrupted or postponed without knowledge of the length of time Materials and Methods: Pre pandemic, all patients in our clinic received the SCREENIVF questionnaire during their first consult as a standard procedure (T0) After closure of our clinic in March due to the restrictive consequences, were patients invited by email, on the 16th of June 2020, to participate in an online questionnaire study (T1) Consenting participants provided demographic information and completed the validated FertiQoL and SCREENIVF questionnaires Mean scores were compared using the Paired-Samples T Test, while the McNemar test was used on paired nominal data Results: From the 336 invited patients, 120 responded More women (n=79) than men (n=41) agreed to participate in the study Of the 120 participants, 72 (60%) completed the SCREENIVF at T0 We analyzed the difference between scores at T0 and T1 of those 72 participants At T1, the mean score of the SCREENIVF was higher in the domains Anxiety, (mean score T0 4 0±3 2 vs T1 5 3±3 5, p=0 002), and Helplessness (mean score T0 10 7±3 0 vs T1 12 7±4 7, p |
