Romero-Aroca P, Sagarra-Alamo R, Pareja-Rios A, López M. Importance of telemedicine in diabetes care: Relationships between family physicians and ophthalmologists. World J Diabetes 2015; 6(8): 1005-1008 [PMID: 26240697 DOI: 10.4239/wjd.v6.i8.1005]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Pedro Romero-Aroca, MD, PhD, Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Sant Joan, University Rovira i Virgili, Institut de Investigació Sanitaria Pere Virgili, Avda, Doctor Josep Laporte 2, 43202 Reus, Spain. romeropere@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Ophthalmology
Article-Type of This Article
Editorial
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Diabetes. Jul 25, 2015; 6(8): 1005-1008 Published online Jul 25, 2015. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v6.i8.1005
Importance of telemedicine in diabetes care: Relationships between family physicians and ophthalmologists
Pedro Romero-Aroca, Ramon Sagarra-Alamo, Alicia Pareja-Rios, Maribel López
Pedro Romero-Aroca, Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Sant Joan, University Rovira i Virgili, Institut de Investigació Sanitaria Pere Virgili, 43202 Reus, Spain
Ramon Sagarra-Alamo, ABS Reus-1, Retinography non-mydriatic Unit, CAP Sant Pere, 43202 Reus, Spain
Alicia Pareja-Rios, Department of Ophthalmology, Retina section, Hospital Universitario de Canarias, 38320 Tenerife, Spain
Maribel López, Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Valladolid, Ocular Diabetes Unit of IOBA, 47001 Valladolid, Spain
Author contributions: All the authors equally contributed to this work.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors has any conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Pedro Romero-Aroca, MD, PhD, Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Sant Joan, University Rovira i Virgili, Institut de Investigació Sanitaria Pere Virgili, Avda, Doctor Josep Laporte 2, 43202 Reus, Spain. romeropere@gmail.com
Telephone: +34-977-310300 Fax: +34-977-32375
Received: November 30, 2014 Peer-review started: December 1, 2014 First decision: February 7, 2015 Revised: February 12, 2015 Accepted: May 8, 2015 Article in press: May 13, 2015 Published online: July 25, 2015 Processing time: 246 Days and 13.8 Hours
Abstract
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the worldwide leading cause of legal blindness. In 2010, 1.9% of diabetes mellitus (DM) patients were legally blind and 10.2% had visual impairment. The control of DM parameters (glycemia, arterial tension and lipids) is the gold standard for preventing DR complications, although, unfortunately, DR still appeared in a 25% to 35% of patients. The stages of severe vision threading DR, include proliferative DR (6.96%) and diabetic macular edema (6.81%). This review aims to update our knowledge on DR screening using telemedicine, the different techniques, the problems, and the inclusion of different professionals such as family physicians in care programs.
Core tip: If telemedicine is especially suited for a particular medical specialisation, that specialisation is undoubtedly ophthalmology. The enormous healthcare pressure derived from the general population’s high demand for vision control and the prevalence of certain diseases which affect the eyes, such as diabetes mellitus, combined with the tremendous progress in diagnostic imaging systems in this speciality make it especially possible to send images over telemedicine networks for the diagnosis or even prevention of eye diseases, thus making the demand for the use of these types of methods extremely important.
