Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in Breastfeeding Consultations on LactApp, an m-Health Solution for Breastfeeding Support

Abstract

Introduction: Breastfeeding is an unquestionable right of mothers and their children; however, it is not a one-woman job. For breastfeeding to succeed, women must have access to appropriate support and guidance. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restriction measures and lockdown to reduce community spread of the disease have negatively impacted breastfeeding support from health services and thus, in mothers' breastfeeding experiences. Objective: The present study aims at evaluating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on breastfeeding consultations in LactApp (a mobile application [app] for m-Health focused on breastfeeding support, www.lactapp.com) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: We conducted an observational, descriptive, and retrospective study with LactApp data recorded between July 2018 and March 2021, including 9,151,456 queries classified in 48 topics among 137,327 active users. We used the Interrupted time series model to evaluate the increase of the number of queries consulted and active users due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Wilcoxon test was used to study the increase of certain topics due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: LactApp active users increased by 12,092 users (p < 0.001) during the COVID-19 outbreak and confinement and queries consulted in LactApp also significantly increased by 10,899 queries per month after the pandemic outbreak. The breastfeeding topics that significantly increased are those related to growth spurts, breastfeeding stages, breastfeeding technique, breast pain and mastitis, problems with infants not gaining weight correctly, hypogalactia, increased milk demand, and relactation. These findings are important to understand the potential of online tools when face-to-face professional support is unavailable. Conclusions: Critical issues in breastfeeding establishment were highly consulted and significantly increased in the app during the pandemic. We believe that LactApp was a useful tool for breastfeeding support when women could not obtain appropriate support elsewhere. LactApp might be considered a powerful tool to identify critical issues of breastfeeding and trends in an automatized manner.

Keywords: COVID-19; breastfeeding support; lockdown; m-Health; pandemic.