What does follow-up mean?

What does follow-up mean: Follow-up means that the hospital keeps in touch with the patients after diagnosis and treatment or requires the patients to come to the hospital for regular review, and continues to track the patient's disease efficacy and development status based on the needs of medical treatment, scientific research, and teaching. Observing the work done is also called follow up. Simply put, it means continuing to follow up and visit the patient after diagnosis and treatment.

The main purposes of follow-up include:

1. Evaluate the effect of treatment: Follow-up can help doctors evaluate the patient’s condition improvement and recovery process after treatment, so as to adjust the treatment plan and improve Therapeutic effect.

2. Monitor adverse reactions: Follow-up can promptly detect adverse reactions that occur during treatment, such as drug side effects, surgical complications, etc., so that appropriate countermeasures can be taken to reduce the risk of complications. .

3. Prevent complications: Follow-up can detect complications that may occur after patients receive treatment, such as drug interactions, surgical infections, etc., so that preventive measures can be taken in a timely manner to reduce the incidence of complications.

4. Improve quality of life: Follow-up can help doctors understand changes in patients’ quality of life during treatment, such as mental state, self-care ability, etc., so as to provide patients with targeted psychological support and rehabilitation guidance, and improve patient's quality of life.

5. Provide personalized treatment suggestions: Follow-up can help doctors understand the patient's characteristics and needs during the treatment process, and provide patients with more personalized treatment suggestions and rehabilitation plans.

6. Disease surveillance and prevention: Follow-up can provide public health departments with information on disease epidemic trends, morbidity, mortality and other information, and provide a basis for formulating disease prevention and treatment strategies. Follow-up can be carried out in a variety of ways, such as telephone follow-up, outpatient follow-up, home visit, telemedicine, etc. With the development of science and technology, the application of Internet, mobile communication and other technologies has made remote follow-up more and more popular, improving the convenience and effectiveness of follow-up.

In short, follow-up is an important medical and public health method. Through regular or irregular observation and evaluation of people who have received treatment or intervention, treatment effects can be improved and complications can be prevented. disease, improve quality of life, etc.