Abstract
Purpose :
Up to now, there is no report about disease types of teleophthalmology through the method of videoconferencing-based teleconsultation in China. The purpose of this study is to investigate the disease constitution ratio of remote video consultation in teleophthalmology in China.
Methods :
From January 2014 to October 2016, 540 patients of video consultation for teleophthalmology from 39 county-level hospitals across China were reviewed. Average age of patients was 46.2±19.4 years-old. The tele-medical software system based on cloud platform developed by Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology and Beijing Daheng Prust Company was used for remote evaluation of ocular fundus images, and Cisco WebEx Meeting video conferencing system was used for the video consultation. Each video consultation spent 15-20 minutes and was performed by a vice-chief physician of Beijing Tongren Eye Center under assistance of computer management personnel. The remote video consultation records were exported from Daheng Prust software system, and statistical classification and analysis of diseases was done with Excel and SPSS.
Results :
Twenty-one ophthalmologists from different sub-specialties of Beijing Tongren Eye Center participated the video consultation. The average consultation time interval from appointment to complete was 2.44 ± 2.66 days. In all 540 cases, primary glaucoma and its surgical complications were 55 cases (10.19%), AION and other optic disc edema of single eye 43 cases (7.96%), RVO and cystoid macular edema 34 cases(6.30%), secondary glaucoma 19 cases (3.52%), PDR and DME 18 cases (3.33%), ocular hypertension 17 cases (3.15%), wet AMD 16 case s(2.96%), decreased visual acuity with unknown origin 16 cases(2.96%), pathological myopia and its macular lesions 12 cases (2.22%), recurrent central serous chorioretinopathy 10 cases (1.85%), eye blunt injury and its complications 10 cases (1.85%), other macular diseases 9 cases (1.67%), retinitis pigmentosa 9 cases (1.67%), panuveitis 8 cases (1.48%), chemical injuries of cornea and conjunctiva 7 cases(1.30%).
Conclusions :
In current video consultation of tele-ophthalmology in China, diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma and its surgical complications, monocular optic disc edema, retinal vein occlusion and proliferative diabetic retinopathy are major demand for tele-ophthalmology in Chinese county-level hospitals.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.