COVID-19 pandemic period
The COVID-19 pandemic started officially in mid March 2020 in our country. One hundred and eight patients were receiving AIT, when pandemic started. Among these, 31 patients (28,7%) dropped out the therapy and breaks were observed in 15 patients (13,8%). Among the drop-out group, the median treatment duration was 40 (29-49.8) months. The most frequent reason for drop-out was fear of being infected with COVID-19 (35.4%), thinking that the AIT practise stopped due to COVID-19 pandemic (29%). The other reasons included transportation problems due to intercity transportation and and curfew (22.7%), inability to access medication (6.5%) having a COVID-19 infected family number (3.2%) and few doses left to finalize the treatment (3.2%) (Table II).
Drop-out rate was significiantly higher in older age(p=0.004) and male gender(p=0.045).(Table IV) AIT duration was significiantly high in the drop-out group according to the compliant group(p=0.018).
We further performed univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis for the risk factors for the development of the drop-out during the COVID-19 pandemic. Male gender [OR:2.972, 95%CI:1.132-7.804, P = .027] and higher age [OR:1.209, 95%CI:1.064-1.375, P = .004] were found to be the independent risk factors for drop-out during COVID-19 pandemic.(Table V)