Narrative review of telemedicine consultation in medical practice

Figures & data

Table 1 Summary of key findings for telemedicine applications in different medical specialties

Medical specialty	Purpose of telemedicine application	Outcome	Reference(s)
Surgery	Neurosurgical consultation	Reduction of the time required for consultation	Rogers et al^Citation34
	Fine-tissue laparoscopic manipulation	Successful laparoscopic radical prostatectomy	Abbou et al^Citation37, Link et al^Citation35 and Rassweiler et al^Citation38,Citation39
		Successful remote monitoring and assistance during laparoscopy	Nguan et al^Citation42, Rassweiler et al^Citation43, and Varkarakis et al^Citation44
		Successful laparoscopic pyeloplasty	Luke et al^Citation40 and Nguan et al^Citation42,
		Successful minimization of esophageal perforation during Heller myotomy	Melvin et al^Citation41
		Successful use of telesurgery applied to urology	Varkarakis et al^Citation44
	Intercontinental telelaparoscopic adrenalectomy	Successful adrenalectomy	Janetschek et al^Citation45
	Training and mentoring to community surgeons	Successful training and mentoring	Anvari^Citation46 and Rassweiler et al^Citation43
	Nephrectomies in porcine models	Procedure completed successfully	Sterbis et al^Citation48
Ophthalmology	Screening for cytomegalovirus retinitis	High sensitivity and specificity	Ausayakhun et al^Citation49
	Macular disorder referral	The majority of patients received their responses from the ophthalmologist the same or the next day	Kelly et al^Citation50
	Diabetic retinopathy-screening examinations	Participants did not require a follow-up with an eye care provider	Mansberger et al^Citation51
	Diagnosis of treatment-warranted retinopathy of prematurity	High sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value for detection of treatment-warranted retinopathy of prematurity	Fijalkowski et al^Citation52
Pathology and microbiology	Second-opinion service on frozen sections	Limitation of unnecessary patient transfer	Têtu et al^Citation64
	Digitalization of frozen section and tissue-smear preparations of brain tumors	Reliable diagnosis before intervention	Gould and Saikali^Citation65
	Consultation over difficult cases	Time and cost reduction	Ayad and Yagi^Citation66
	Diagnosis of infectious diseases during missions	Gaining of microbiology expertise without the physical presence of an expert	Scheid^Citation67
Oncology	Teleoncology visits	Cost reduction	Doolittle et al^Citation69
Gastroenterology	Telerehabilitation system for dysphagia	Excellent level of agreement between the telerehabilitation and face-to-face approach	Sharma et al^Citation70
Dermatology	Teleconsultation in remote countries	Consultations had an average reply time of 5 hours	McManus et al^Citation72
	Virtual lesion clinic assessment	Reduction in average waiting times and patient costs for first assessment	Lim et al^Citation73
Cardiology	Telemanagement services for patients with chronic heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease	Cost decrease	Bernocchi et al^Citation22
	Telediagnosis for cardiac surgery	Successful cardiac surgery	Sekar and Vilvanathan^Citation23
	Remote fetal echocardiograms	Successful diagnosis of congenital heart disease	McCrossan et al^Citation26
	Home TV channel for teleguiding chronic heart failure patients	Reliable and efficient tool for patient management	Balk et al^Citation28
	Neonatal cases with suspected cardiopathy surveillance	Successful surveillance	Triunfo et al^Citation29
	Remote sonography in a pediatric cardiology center	Successful diagnosis	Widmer et al^Citation30
Dentistry	Interceptive orthodontic services provided to disadvantaged children in order to reduce malocclusion severity	Reduction in malocclusion severity	Berndt et al^Citation75
	Consultation between US Armed Forces dentists and specialists on patients’ status	Easy and cost-effective access of dentists to specialists Improvement in the quality of care	Rocca et al^Citation76
		Better decision making and better communication between dentists and their patients
Psychiatry and neurology	Intervention delivery by geographical information system	Improved the patients’ and their caregivers’ quality of life, providing at the same time a continuity of care	Bramanti et al^Citation9
	Post-traumatic stress disorder treatment by videoconferencing	High patient satisfaction if compared with the discomfort of talking in person about painful past events	Frueh et al^Citation12, Germain et al^Citation14, and Morland et al^Citation13
	Depression-related disorders	Increased satisfaction and reduced costs	Ruskin et al^Citation17, Fortney et al^Citation16, Moreno et al^Citation18, and Fortney et al^Citation15
	Teleconferencing to diagnose and assess potential psychiatric disorders in asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants	The majority of patients reported a high level of acceptance and satisfaction, as well as willingness to use teleconferencing again or recommend it to others	Mucic^Citation19,Citation20
	Referral diagnosis replay	Neurologist was confident of the diagnosis in the majority of the referrals	Patterson et al^Citation10
	Therapy for obsessive–compulsive disorders	The majority of patients were highly improved and no longer met diagnostic criteria for obsessive–compulsive disorders	Vogel et al^Citation11
Genetics	Screening for potential genetic syndromes using telemedicine	Telegenetic diagnoses were confirmed at the clinic in seven out of eight children	Stalker et al^Citation60
	Videoconferencing to deliver genetic counseling services	High level of satisfaction	Meropol et al^Citation61 and d’Agincourt-Canning et al^Citation62
	Genetic counseling for hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer	Reduction in travel and associated costs	Zilliacus et al^Citation58
Geriatrics	A remote-site management	Rapid decision making in the presence of acute or subacute emergencies	Pallawala and Lun^Citation77 and Hao et al^Citation83
		Reduction in unnecessary admissions and improvement in nursing skills in geriatric care
		Reduced medical errors, mortality, and hospital length of stay, but high cost for telecommunication technology implementation
	Mobility-impaired-patient management	Effective and alternative care model that could be integrated into existing home-care services	Arnaert and Delesie^Citation79 and Tchalla et al^Citation82
		Reduction in falls at home, as well as greater reduction in postfall hospitalization rate
	In-home telerehabilitation of elderly	Valuable resource for both information and communication needs	Mix et al^Citation78 and Tousignant et al^Citation81
		Satisfaction of both health care professionals and patients

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