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Teledentistry may improve access to care for geriatric patients
![Teledentistry may improve access to care for geriatric patients Teledentistry may improve access to care for geriatric patients](https://medicaldialogues.in/h-upload/2023/03/10/750x450_204282-teledentistry-featured.webp)
Teledentistry using intraoral photography via smartphones may allow for the remote diagnosis of dental conditions, which may improve access to care and facilitate faster referral of geriatric patients suggests a new study published in the Cureus
The major barrier to oral health care for geriatrics is access to dental care. Teledentistry is the field of dentistry that uses telecommunication with digital imaging for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatment, and continuing dental education, enabling some means of approach to oral health care. This study aimed to assess the accuracy of diagnosing dental caries in the older age group by examining intraoral photographs taken by smartphone camera compared with standard clinical dental examination.
A calibrated dentist examined 18 patients aged 60-75 for six variables: sound tooth, decayed tooth, filled tooth with and without caries, missing tooth, and the presence of prosthesis. Intraoral photographs of each patient were taken using a smartphone. The photographs were then sent to six different examiners through WhatsApp. The accuracy of the diagnosis was measured by applying Cohen's kappa, sensitivity, and specificity. Fleiss' kappa was used to measure the agreement index using the software R (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria) version 4.2.1.
The overall agreement between the tele-examiners and the control was measured, with the kappa scores ranging from 0.897 to 0.921, and the mean kappa score was 0.909. There was high specificity and sensitivity in the value observed. The agreement index, measured through Fleiss' kappa for six teeth conditions, reported the perfect agreement (0.867) among six examiners.
Under the limitations of the study, teledentistry using a mobile phone has acceptable accuracy for diagnosing caries in the older age group compared to a standard clinical dental examination.
Reference:
Pandey P, Jasrasaria N, Bains R, et al. (January 02, 2023) The Efficacy of Dental Caries Telediagnosis Using Smartphone: A Diagnostic Study in Geriatric Patients. Cureus 15(1): e33256. doi:10.7759/cureus.33256
Dr. Shravani Dali has completed her BDS from Pravara institute of medical sciences, loni. Following which she extensively worked in the healthcare sector for 2+ years. She has been actively involved in writing blogs in field of health and wellness. Currently she is pursuing her Masters of public health-health administration from Tata institute of social sciences. She can be contacted at editorial@medicaldialogues.in.
Dr Kamal Kant Kohli-MBBS, DTCD- a chest specialist with more than 30 years of practice and a flair for writing clinical articles, Dr Kamal Kant Kohli joined Medical Dialogues as a Chief Editor of Medical News. Besides writing articles, as an editor, he proofreads and verifies all the medical content published on Medical Dialogues including those coming from journals, studies,medical conferences,guidelines etc. Email: editorial@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751