Effect of a Short Message Service Intervention on Patients With Short Bowel Syndrome

Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS) is a condition that results from a host of different conditions, the most common of which is Necrotizing Enterocolitis. Patients who have SBS are often Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) dependent. TPN is a carefully formulated intravenous nutrition that is utilized either alone or in conjunction with gastrointestinal feeds in patients who fail to achieve adequate caloric intake enterally. According to the American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, 360,000 hospital visits required usage of TPN in 2009. Short and long-term use of TPN is associated with catheter infections, cholestasis, liver failure, refeeding-syndrome, hyperglycemia, bone demineralization, and death (1). Thus careful and comprehensive monitoring of patients on TPN, especially after hospital discharge is essential (1-3). Some hospitals have introduced resource intensive support teams consisting of various health care professionals to manage these costly patients (1).

Using a variety of definitions, the incidence of SBS has been estimated at approximately 0.02 to 0.1 percent among all live births (4, 5), 0.5 to 2.0 percent among neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions (4, 5), and 0.7 percent among very low birthweight infants (6). Approximately 80 percent of pediatric SBS cases develop during the neonatal period.

The average cost of care in the US for a single pediatric patient with SBS is $550,250 +/- $248, 398 for the first year of care alone (7). These costs were attributable to prolonged requirements for intensive care resources, numerous surgical procedures, multiple readmissions, TPN and home care during the first year of diagnosis. Interestingly, Spencer et al. suggested that hospital-based costs steadily declined in subsequent years, but home-care services increased every year for the first 5 y of diagnosis (7). This increasing cost was attributable to increasing complications of TPN, especially infectious complications (something our application will specifically try to identify). The mean total cost of care per child over a 5-y period was US$1,619,851 +/- US$1,028,985 (7).

At Cardinal Glenon, a significant amount of time (about 10 hours per week) is spent by nurses calling these patients. This automated system will allow nurses to spend a portion of these 10 hours performing other activities, significantly reducing the costs attributed to SBS patients. Also, most of the mothers of patients who have SBS are between the ages of 15-30. This generation of millennials often have an aversion to phone calls and prefer texts [8]. Text- messages can be answered at a convenient time for the parent while the parent must be present and available to answer a phone call. Multiple prior text message or application intervention studies have reported high response rates, high satisfaction, and improvement in outcomes (9-12). For example, Devitto et al. reported that the estimated odds of reporting critical care symptoms of application group was 8.9 times that of control and showed slightly higher adherence to the prescribed regimen (OR 1.64, 95% CI [1.01, 2.66]) (9). Martinez et al. reported that 16 patients would have returned to the hospital without photos of surgical sites prompting health care team intervention (12). Our automated texting system may improve response rates from these young parents.

For this project, the investigators will be examining the effect of an Epharmix text messaging intervention on identifying potentially dangerous and re-admission causing symptoms with SBS patients on TPN.