Use of mobile telemedicine for cervical cancer screening.
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Date
2011-05-20
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Abstract
Visual inspection of the cervix with application of 4 acetic acid VIA is an inexpensive alternative to cytology based screening in areas where resources are limited such as in many developing countries We have examined the diagnostic agreement between off site remote expert diagnosis using photographs of the cervix photographic inspection with acetic acid PIA and in person VIA The images for remote evaluation were taken with a mobile phone and transmitted by MMS The study population consisted of 95 HIV positive women in Gaborone Botswana An expert gynaecologist made a definitive positive or negative reading on the PIA results of 64 out of the 95 women whose PIA images were also read by the nurse midwives The remaining 31 PIA images were deemed insufficient in quality for a reading by the expert gynaecologist The positive nurse PIA readings were concordant with the positive expert PIA readings in 82 of cases and the negative PIA readings between the two groups were fully concordant in 89 of cases These results suggest that mobile telemedicine may be useful to improve access of women in remote areas to cervical cancer screening utilizing the VIA see and treat method
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Keywords
Rural populations, Women (only), Supply of services, Geographic inaccessibility, Limited demonstration, Feasibility, Individual based, Cancer, Remote client-to-provider consultations (Telemedicine), Disease diagnosis / Point-of-care diagnostics, Data collection and reporting, MMS, Image, Camera