Applicability of telemedicine in the screening of diabetic retinopathy (DR): The first multicentre study in Italy. The No Blind Study.

AIMS Diabetic retinopathy DR represents the main cause of blindness among adults in the industrialized Countries Use of telemedicine could offer an easy smart specialist fundus oculi examination as well as putting in a screening program many patients who otherwise would be excluded MATERIALS AND METHODS The NO Blind is a transversal multicentre observational study Its pilot phase involved nine public outpatient clinics for six months As endpoint of the study we assessed the prevalence of DR by retinography in a subset of the Italian population Patients fundus oculi photos were performed by trained diabetologists through a digital smart ophthalmoscope RESULTS According to our endpoint in the final study population n 1461 obtained excluding patients for whom retinography was not able to provide any diagnosis DR prevalence was equal to 15 5 According to the ROC Curve performed we can observe how retinography appears a highly accurate method to detect DR AUROC 0 971 95 C I 0 954 0 989 with a specificity of the 100 and a sensitivity of the 94 3 CONCLUSIONS Our findings in an Italian setting confirm main data in the literature about DR prevalence Hence telemedicine could represent an accurate fast and cheap method for screening of DR