Prospective Evaluation of a Smartphone Otoscope for Home Tympanostomy Tube Surveillance: A Pilot Study.

Objectives: Recent technological advances have led to the capability of performing high resolution imaging of the tympanic membrane. Smartphone technologies and applications have provided the opportunity to capture digital images and easily share them. The smartphone otoscope device was developed as a simple system that can convert a smartphone into a digital otoscope. This device has the prospective ability to improve physician-patient communication and assist with the diagnosis and management of ear disease. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility and physician/parental satisfaction using the Cellscope® smartphone attachment for at home tympanostomy tube monitoring.
Methods: Children between 6 months and 15 years of age at an urban tertiary children's hospital that were scheduled for bilateral tympanostomy tube insertion or underwent bilateral tympanostomy tube surgery were prospectively enrolled in the study. Comparisons were made between parental home-recorded videos and findings during in-office otoscopy. Two independent otolaryngologists reviewed the videos and concordance between inter-rater agreements was calculated. Acceptability and use questionnaires were administered to physicians and parents.
Results: There was good intra-rater agreement between traditional otoscopy and video-otoscopy for tube extruding, tube blocked and tube extruded with at least 80% agreement ( P  < .05) and excellent inter-rater agreement between physicians for nearly all tube variables ( P  < .0001) There was a high degree of satisfaction with this mode of surveillance. Parents and physicians agreed that the CellScope® smartphone was easy to use, helpful with the occurrence of acute events, and appeared to improve quality of care.
Conclusions: The CellScope® smartphone is feasible for use in tympanostomy tube surveillance. Use of the device may allow otolaryngologists to easily follow a child's tympanostomy tube remotely over time and offer greater parental satisfaction.