Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the delivery of health services. Here we review the patient perspective, on rapid changes in treatment delivery of testosterone preparations instituted in the first wave of the pandemic.

Methods: 49 hypogonadal male patients were identified as attenders to the Endocrine unit for Nebido™ injection. They were temporarily switched to testosterone gel to rapidly comply with COVID rules. 8 weeks after the switch these patients were sent a postal questionnaire to assess patient satisfaction and preference. The survey consisted of 18 questions including: details of the new treatment, administration satisfaction, side effects and preference of location of treatment administration. The questions included multiple choice satisfaction ratings, yes or no answers and free text areas.

Results: 51% of patients responded to the survey. Patients were satisfied with the information provided need for treatment change, administration satisfaction was much lower. 61.9% of patients reported numerous issues and difficulties around using the gel and most felt less than satisfied with their new treatment. Patients reported difficulty using the gel and found it time consuming and inconvenient to apply. A few patients expressed concern regarding the risk of transference on to children. The most common reported side effect was fatigue. There was no correlation between the side effects experienced and the patients underlying indication for treatment. Other local side effects included burning of the skin, itching and painful rashes.

Conclusion: The survey results found that although patients were happy to continue using the gel if a second wave were to occur, 96% of respondents would rather switch back to receiving their injection in hospital as opposed to using the gel once it was safe to do so. Many have now switched back and community teams have enabled this to happen efficiently in the domiciliary setting.