بررسی دقت تشخیص‌ها و طرح‌های درمانی در تشخیص بیماری‌های پوستی از راه دور : مطالعه آزمایشی

Introduction: Limited mobility, high costs of transportation and specialized care, make it very difficult for the elderly, especially those living in nursing homes, to get specialized care services, particularly in the field of skin diseases. Therefore, Teledermatology can be considered as a solution to overcome these barriers and improve access to specialized skin care services. Purpose: The study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and treatment planning in teledermatology compared to in person examination. Methods: The population of this quasi-experimental study, consisted of 280 elderly people living in Kahrizak Charity Foundation in Tehran. The exclusion criteria included: emergency skin conditions and genital skin lesions. All participants should have signed a consent form. No sampling was done since there were few qualified individuals (n = 46), finally, 37 patients participated in the study. In order to calculate the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment planning, simple statistical methods were used and data were analyzed by SPSS version 20. Results: The participants with skin diseases, consisted of 37 elderly patients (aged 62 to 89), 22 of whom were men. The accuracy of diagnosis and treatment planning for patients provided by teledermatology compared to those of  in-person examination were, 86% and 84%, respectively Conclusion: The elderly can benefit from teledermatology in nursing homes; therefore, they can have better access to specialized services and avoid unnecessary trips to dermatology clinics.