Efficacy Evaluation of Smartphone-based Stent Tracking Application in Follow-up Patients with Ureteral Stents: A Prospective Study

Abstract

Objective: Our objective was to determine how effectively our smartphone app improved follow-up compliance in ureteral stent patients. Materials and Methods: Two groups of patients who underwent double-j stent placement were compared. For the traditional program (i), retrospective data from January 2021 to June 2021 was collected. We randomly selected 72 patients from the overall 121 patient data. For the smartphone-based stent tracking program (ii), a smartphone application was used from July 2022 to January 2023 to track 72 patients. Result: The rate of poor compliance in group (ii) (4.2%), was significantly lower (p=0.004) than the rate of poor compliance in group (i) (19.4%). Differences in diagnosis between the two groups were not found to be related to the compliance rates. Surprisingly, kidney transplant patients in both groups had perfect compliance. Conclusion: Smartphone-based stent tracking application increased patient compliance to appointments in patients who underwent double-j stent placement. This study is a demonstration of how technology can assist patients to better health care and can prevent complications.

Keywords

• Forgotten ureteral stents
• smartphone-based stent tracking application