Análise da confiabilidade do telediagnóstico por imagens dinâmicas em laringologia

Abstract

The present study aims to establish the level of diagnostic reliability provided by the transmission of a videolaryngoscopy by videoconference (VC), evaluating the quality of the transmitted images and its impact on diagnoses. Two DVDs with 60 laryngoscopy (30 fiberscopies and 30 telescopies) images, corresponding to 30 original and 30 transmitted by VC, were evaluated by 6 laryngologists who answered a questionnaire on the quality of the selected images (scores from 0 to 3) and on the diagnoses of the related disease. A third DVD with 26 pairs of images, an original and a VC, or two original, was also analyzed by the examiners who had to select which image presented the best quality, which corresponded to the VC image, and the possible impact of such differences on the quality of diagnoses. A high level of agreement (K = 0.911) was found among the examiners in relation to the identification of the VC (96,15% of accuracy) and to the best quality of the original image (K = 0,850). Although a partial agreement has been found among the examiners (K = 0,371), diagnoses was not jeopardized by the quality of the VC image in 75,64% of the cases. Original videotelescopy images (83,33% very good) showed the best quality and videofiberscopy VC the worst (36,66% very good and good). A high degree of correctness was found for the diagnoses by VC images (86,67% by fiberscopy and by telescopy). Consequently, the use of a VC to transmit videolaryngoscopy images has proved to be efficient for the remote diagnoses of larynx diseases