Real-time mobile teledermoscopy for skin cancer screening targeting an agricultural population: An experiment on 289 patients in France

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teledermoscopy images acquired in primary health care and hospital settings – a comparative study of image quality

Gyllencreutz

Bäckman

Terstappen

et al. 2017

“…15 In addition, with the improvement in the quality of mobile phones, cameras and other technologies, such applications become technically more simple and more affordable. 16,17 Various reviews on teledermatological applications have been published over the last years, 2,8,10 but to our knowledge, no upto-date review on LI teledermatology across different conditions has been published. Hence, an overview is lacking on the effectiveness, costs and accuracy of LI applications compared to standard in-person care.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Live interactive teledermatology compared to in‐person care – a systematic review

Andrees

Klein

Augustin

et al. 2020

Teledermatology is a rapidly developing field of dermatological care, giving the opportunity to deliver more efficient healthcare to patients in remote areas. Live interactive (LI) teledermatology uses videoconferencing and, hence, allows for direct communication. A current overview on effectiveness, costs, feasibility and accuracy of LI applications compared to standard care is missing. The present systematic review provides this overview on LI teledermatology. Two databases were searched until April 2019, followed by title, abstract and full‐text screening. Additionally, reference lists of the detected eligible articles were screened for further eligible studies. Studies comparing LI applications with standard care were included. Data on study design, sample size, country, objectives, main findings and characteristics of LI applications were extracted. Results on time effectiveness, costs, accuracy and feasibility of LI applications were synthesized. Additionally, the quality of included studies was assessed. Twenty‐three publications were included in the final analysis: seventeen case–control studies and six randomized controlled trials. Included studies were published between 1997 and 2017. Study quality differed across studies. The studies were carried out in eight different countries. Eleven studies focused on patient consultation, three on patient organization and nine on combined applications of the aforementioned. Nine studies investigated applications facilitating patient–provider interaction. Fourteen studies evaluated applications combining patient–provider and provider–provider interaction, meaning the patient sits next to one provider while using LI applications to interact with another provider. This review reveals that LI applications can be a time effective substitute of or supplement to standard dermatological care. Results demonstrated that LI and standard care are comparable with regard to feasibility and accuracy. No clear tendencies can be reported with regard to costs. However, there is a lack of current comparative studies.

“…Teledermoscopy for skin cancer screening Editor We read with great interest the paper written by H. Liu et al on real-time teledermoscopy in agricultural population. 1 However, we cannot understand how the authors, given the results of their study, can explain in conclusion that this method and this approach could be useful for improving skin cancer screening in at-risk populations. In fact, they explain that of 289 patients seen, 199 patients were found with 390 suspicious lesions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

Teledermoscopy for skin cancer screening

Giorgi

Savarese

D’Errico

et al. 2016

EditorWe read with great interest the paper written by H. Liu et al. on real-time teledermoscopy in agricultural population.1 However, we cannot understand how the authors, given the results of their study, can explain in conclusion that this method and this approach could be useful for improving skin cancer screening in at-risk populations. In fact, they explain that of 289 patients seen, 199 patients were found with 390 suspicious lesions. The number of people and, above all, of lesions identified as doubtful is extremely high. They found that 69% of their patients should be referred to a dermatologist and, what's more, they found patients with more than one suspicious lesion. In our opinion, this appears to be a very poor performance. It is likely that the participation in a 1-day course on the diagnosis and dermoscopy of skin tumours was not only not helpful, but also created doubts in the minds of doctors, leading them to identify more suspicious lesions referring more patients to a second level of evaluation. Perhaps it would have been useful to include in the study a control group with doctors who had not attended a preparatory course to analyse the differences and the real efficacy of the course. Such an approach, if applied in large numbers, can cause an increase in unnecessary visits, anxiety in patients and an overcrowding in clinics, with an increase in waiting lists in dermatology clinics for the early detection of skin cancers. If this approach is being implemented to optimize and save resources, we think that it would be cheaper to use a dermatologist on-site: the patient would be saved the first visit, the dermatologist would see directly 30% of patients in more, and this would save patients' and doctors' time with only one visit.Normally, a GP, no particular courses, has clearly better and he does not send the 70% of his patients to a second skin examination. 2 The literature is still discussing the efficacy of teledermatology -and even more so of teledermoscopy -performed by dermatologists, let alone by non-dermatologists. Telediagnosis and face-to-face diagnosis reliability for melanocytic and non-melanocytic 'pink' lesions.