Evaluation of safety, effectiveness and reproducibility of telemedicine for neurosurgical screening

• Autor(a) principal: Esteves,Luiz Adriano
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Ribeiro,André Tosta, Silva,Elton Gomes da, Amato,Marcelo Campos Moraes, Rodrigues,Leandro Bôa-Hora, Tedeschi,Helder, Santos,Marcos Juliano dos, Lebrão,Gustav, Joaquim,Andrei Fernandes
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Einstein (São Paulo)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1679-45082019000400205
• topic: Neurosurgery; Smartphones/trends; Telemedicine; Neurosurgery/methods; Sciences Health

ABSTRACT Objective: To ascertain the safety, effectiveness and reproducibility of screening potential neurosurgical patients by means of smartphones. Methods: This is a retrospective and multicentric study. Data were collected from the medical records of patients subjected to real emergency neurosurgical evaluations and compared with assessments by neurosurgeons using smartphones to determine the feasibility of identifying changes in cranial computed tomography scans, potentially serious conditions of patients, and the need for transfer to reference centers. Results: We analyzed 232 cases. The main diagnosis was traumatic brain injury, with 119 cases (51.3%). Of this, 105 (45.3%) patients were discharged immediately after the assessment. The telemedicine evaluators presented 95.69% accuracy in the identification of changes in computed tomography scans, with 0.858 concordance. Accuracy in the identification of severity was 95.26%, with 0.858 concordance. As for procedure, the concordance among evaluators was 0.672, increasing to 100% in cases that required surgical treatment. Conclusion: Our study indicated that the use of telemedicine for screening patients with acute neurological disorders was safe, effective and reproducible. Implementation of the method shows a promising potential to improve the patient's outcome by reducing unnecessary transfers and decreasing the time elapsed until a specialist can be consulted.