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TOPLINE:

The use of social media for phone reminders and health education doubled attendance rates in the 3 months after surgery in children with congenital ectopia lentis (CEL), while enhancing parental knowledge and increasing treatment rates for amblyopia.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a clinical trial at a tertiary ophthalmic hospital in Guangzhou, China, to evaluate the effects of the WeChat application that provides phone reminders and health education to encourage follow-up care after surgery for children with CEL.
• They enrolled 110 children scheduled for lens surgery and randomly assigned them to receive the social media intervention (n = 55; mean age, 6.9 years) or standard care (n = 55; mean age, 7.3 years); children with ocular abnormalities other than ectopia lentis were excluded from the study.
• Parents in the intervention group received phone reminders and health education via the social media application before scheduled follow-up appointments at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months after surgery.
• The primary outcome was follow-up attendance 3 months post-surgery.

TAKEAWAY:

• The group who received the social media intervention had consistently higher attendance rates for follow-up care than the standard care group at 1 week (92.7% vs 87.3%), 1 month (81.8% vs 58.2%), and 3 months (83.6% vs 41.8%).
• Follow-up adherence at the 3-month mark was more than double for children in the intervention group than for those in the other group, with a relative risk (RR) of 2.05 (P < .001).
• Parents of children in the intervention group were about 10% more likely to show improvements in knowledge accuracy on CEL at 3 months after surgery than those in the standard care group.
• The social media intervention was also associated with higher rates of treatment for amblyopia (RR, 2.40; 95% CI, 1.26-4.56).

IN PRACTICE:

“This approach offers a model for managing chronic conditions that require ongoing monitoring and intervention in resource limited settings, including in developing countries,” the researchers reported.

“For children with CEL and their parents, while phone reminders and health education communicated via a smartphone application [WeChat] improved adherence with short-term office visits at 3 months, such telehealth efforts and resources may be better spent elsewhere to improve screening over the short term for complications, such as amblyopia, after CEL surgery or screening annually long term for systemic problems in children with CEL,” according to an editorial accompanying the journal article.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Yiyuan Ma, MD, Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center in Guangzhou, China. It was published online on April 10, 2025, in JAMA Ophthalmology.

LIMITATIONS:

This study was limited by its 3-month follow-up period, which prevented evaluation of long-term adherence and health outcomes. The intervention required manual phone reminders and standardized educational materials, potentially affecting sustainability and scalability. As a single-center study conducted in China, findings may not be generalizable to other settings.

DISCLOSURES:

This study was supported by grants from the Guangzhou Basic Research Program Joint Funding Project, the National Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.