The Use of Telemedicine in Surgical Care: a Systematic Review.
No Thumbnail Available
Date
0000-00-00
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Introduction Telemedicine describes a healthcare service where physicians communicate with patients remotely using telecommunication technologies Telemedicine is being used to provide pre postoperative surgical consultation and monitoring as well as surgical education Aim Our purpose was to investigate the broad range of telemedicine technologies used in surgical care Material and methods MEDLINE EMBASE CINAHL and Science Direct were searched for available literature from inception to March 30 2018 with no language restrictions The search terms included cell phones telemedicine telecommunications video online videoconferencing remote consultation surgery preoperative perioperative postoperative and surgical procedures Studies were included if they used telemedicine in surgery for pre peri or post surgery periods and if they compared traditional surgical care with surgical telemedicine We excluded case series case reports and conference abstracts from our review Results A total of 24 studies were included in our review The study found that the use of telemedicine in preoperative assessment and diagnosis evaluation after surgery and follow up visits to be beneficial Patients reported benefits to using telemedicine such as avoiding unnecessary trips to hospitals saving time and reducing the number of working days missed Conclusion Telemedicine in surgical care can provide benefits to both patients and