Effect of interactive digital counselling on risk factors and lifestyle in patients with coronary artery disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Aims: Digital counselling has gained paramount importance for coronary artery disease (CAD) patients' treatment in recent years. It has been shown to provide a multitude of benefits, including improved risk factors and enhanced lifestyles. No previous reviews have emphasized the interactiveness of digital counselling. Consequently, the aim of this review is to determine whether interactive two-way digital counselling can provide effective secondary prevention as alternative or adjunct care compared with usual care, where patients visit a cardiac clinic and obtain verbal information and written recommendations of the risk factors without a digital intervention.

Methods and results: Studies that implemented digital interventions in patient counselling among CAD patients were identified by searching 10 electronic databases at the end of August 2022 and updated on 15 December 2023. The Joanna Briggs Institution (JBI) protocol was used for screening, quality assessment, data extraction, and meta-analysis. In total, 15 papers were identified that reported the effect of interactive digital counselling on risk factors and lifestyle changes in CAD patients. The results of the meta-analyses had neutral pre-defined outcomes and did not show any effect on cardiovascular risk factors or lifestyle changes.

Conclusion: There is a need for better descriptions of the content and delivery of interactive digital interventions in studies. In the future, digital interventions should be designed not only to focus on patient, but to incorporate social support, peer groups, and interactive tools on a digital platform. Social support has proved to be important in terms of adherence to treatment.

Registration: PROSPERO CRD42021247315.