Evaluation of Diagnostic Agreement between Teledermatology and Clinical Examination of Skin Diseases

Background: Telemedicine provides a tele-communication between physician and patient in remote areas for transferring patient information for the purpose of diagnostic and therapeutic services. Teledermatology is a kind of approach for dermatologists that uses high resolution images for diagnosis. In this study we evaluated the agreement between direct (patient-physician) and indirect (telemedicine) dermatologic examination. Methods: This study was performed on selected patients referring to outpatient Dermatology clinic of Loghman Hospital. At the beginning of the study dermatologists were trained for using Dino Lite camera and teledermatology software. In the first stage all patients were visited face to face and diagnosed and then the lesions were captured with Dino Lite camera from 3 angles. After one month the patients were re-evaluated by using the captured pictures from lesions and then second diagnosis was recorded. Diagnosis agreement was evaluated using statistical analysis. Results: During the study 71 patients were enrolled in the study. The results of telemedicine and direct patient examination (patient-physician relationship) were very similar (91% agreement) and only 6 cases did not have diagnostic agreement. Conclusion: The results showed high agreement between telemedicine and clinical examination in diagnosis of skin diseases and therefore confirmed the efficacy of this method.