1. Remote ophthalmology with a smartphone adapter handled by nurses for the diagnosis of eye posterior pole pathologies during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Author
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Luis Castillón-Torre, José Luis García-Garmendia, Serafín Moro-Muñoz, Rocío Del Mar García-Díaz, Florencio González-Márquez, Luna Olea-Pabón, María Victoria Ruiz-Romero, Luis Luque-Romero, and Francisco Javier Hernández-Martínez
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,Slit lamp ,genetic structures ,Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ,business.industry ,Posterior pole ,Health Informatics ,Telehealth ,eye diseases ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Telenursing ,Ophthalmology ,Pandemic ,030221 ophthalmology & optometry ,Medicine ,Outpatient clinic ,030212 general & internal medicine ,business ,Dioptre - Abstract
Introduction: The use of smartphones to provide specialist ophthalmology services is becoming a more commonly used method to support patients with eye pathologies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for telehealth services such as tele-ophthalmology, is increasing rapidly.Methods: In 2019, the agreement between diagnostic tests was investigated by comparing the diagnostic performance for eye posterior pole pathologies of the images obtained by a smartphone coupled to a medical device known as open retinoscope (OR), handled by a nurse and subsequently assessed by an ophthalmologist versus the images obtained by an ophthalmologist using a slit lamp associated to a 76 diopter indirect ophthalmic lens (Volk Super FieldVR ) (SL-IOL) at the outpatient department of a hospital. The OR used in this study worked with a 28 diopter indirect lens.Results: An examination of 151 dilated eyes (79 adult patients, mean age of 66.7 years, 59.5% women) was conducted. Sensitivity was 98.9%, specificity was 89.8%, the positive predictive value was 93.8% and the negative predictive value was 98.2%. The kappa index between both tests was 0.90 (95% CI: 0.83-0.97) in basic diagnosis, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.74-0.89) in syndromic diagnosis (13 categories) and 0.70 (95% CI: 0.62-0.77) in advanced diagnosis (23 categories).Discussion: Images obtained by a nurse using a smartphone coupled to the OR and subsequently assessed by an ophthalmologist showed a high diagnostic performance for eye posterior pole pathologies, which could pave the way for remote ophthalmology systems for this patient group.
- Published
- 2021