Teledentistry: A New Approach in Dental Medicine

Tele-dentistry, its trends, scope, and future framework in oral medicine; a scoping review during January 1999 to December 2021

“…According to the thematic analysis of the included literature, participants who apply tele-dentistry services in the field of oral medicine include healthcare providers, healthcare systems and healthcare seekers. These participants clarify some reasons for satisfaction with their experiences of applying tele-dentistry, such as access to care during the COVID-19 pandemic [15,56], providing oral medicine services in rural areas [15], communication between patients and doctors [15], the usability of tele-dentistry services [15,57], quality in data communication [25], high-quality internet connection [40], and high-quality digital images with medical and dental information to facilitate diagnosis of oral mucosal disease [25]. They also provide some reasons for dissatisfaction with their experience in applying tele-dentistry, for example inadequate information [35], Lack of physical examination by a doctor [15] and not being involved in the care and treatment process during the consultation as much as they wanted [35].…”

“…[1,3,7,51,59] A convenient way for disabled patients in the remote population. [21] Improved access to remote specialists for unassisted populations [40] Facilitate patient-professional communication [18,24] Continuous clinic visits and care [5,7,45] Improve access to preventative and diagnostic care for remote communities [7,19,27] Communication between dental clinicians Rapid access to specialist opinions for the general practitioners [58,60] Practical means of communication between dental clinicians [45] Optimizing the use of specialists' skill in underserved area [8] Access specialized knowledge globally through experts` integration [1] Access to specialist (dental hygienist located in a remote or underserved area/primary healthcare) [7,57] Improve access to specialists (confirming diagnosis/detecting oral lesions/formulating treatment plan) [7,27] Communication (share uncertainties, complexity of cases, experience and doing the best for the patient) [7,60] Giving advice of secondary healthcare staff to primary healthcare staff base on appropriate information [45] Reduce isolation of practitioners through contact with peers and specialists [7] Management/diagnosis of oral lesions by remote support of specialists [7,40] Allowing clinicians to treat the patients in an informed manner [8]…”

“…Streamlining referral of patients [19,61] Reduction of unnecessary referrals [8,9,19,24,40,58] Aid the referral pathway from primary to secondary care [20] Ensuring timely referral [24] Suitable for management of referrals for older dependent adults with oral mucosal disease [25] Travel Reduce unnecessary traveling time and cost [7,19,24] No need to move from home [11] Environmental benefits due to reducing the travel distance [7,51,58] Quality of care Improved quality of care [7,57] Patient empowerment Increasing patient's awareness [5,41] Self-monitoring [5] Risk-factor modification [5] Improves self-oral care [24] Triaging of patient through tele-consultation [24] Triage Improve the efficiency of specialty triaging [1] Ability to prioritize patient's medical needs [13] Effective triage of patients who need emergency clinical attention [1,13,18] Avoiding unnecessary clinical visits [10] Reduce the congestion at the hospital [19] Cost An economical method of preoperative assessment when patient transport is difficult or expensive [8,58] Cost-effective way to organize healthcare [58] Saving the costs of referral [60] Reduce cost of oral health maintenance through shared resources [7] Suitable for elderly who avoid hospital-based treatment due to travel costs [25] ...…”