Telemedical Wound Care Using a New Generation of Mobile Telephones

Abstract

Three physicians separately evaluated61 leg ulcers for the following 9 variables: epithelializa-tion, fibrin, necrosis, and granulation tissue at the cen-terandnormalborder,erythema,cyanosis,eczema,andhyperpigmentationattheperiphery.Onephysicianper-formedtheface-to-faceconsultation(goldstandard),and2othersperformedtheremoteevaluation.Theimagewasobtainedwiththemobiletelephoneandimmediatelysentvia e-mail. To measure the agreement of the evaluationamongthe3physicians,weusedCohen statistics.Over-all, the agreement between the remote and face-to-faceevaluations was very good, with values of up to 0.94Theimagequalitywasjudgedtobegoodin36cases(59%)and very good in 12 (20%). The participants felt com-fortable making a diagnosis based on the pictures in 50cases (82%).