[Internet physician's offices: main reasons for consultation and differences with Primary Care offices]

Direct communication between patients and physicians through internet can represent an opportunity for medical consultation because of higher access that provides this medium.

A retrospective observational study was conducted in order to know the content and the characteristics of the consultations of a free medical physician's office by internet and its differences with the consultations in Primary Care.

During a period of 45 days 221 consultations of which 188 corresponded to health problems were received. The average age of the consultants was very young (21.5 15.7 years; average SD), with predominance of men over women (1,4:1). In the consultations by internet, and in comparison with those of Primary Care, dermatological (relative risk: 6.1; CI 95%: 5.2-10.8), nervous system and sense organs (RR: 1.9; CI 95%: 1.3-2.8), genitourinary (RR: 2.0; CI 95%: 1.3-3.2), and digestive system (RR: 1.7; CI 95%: 1.1-2.6) consultations were carried out more frequently; less frequent consultations were those of respiratory tract (RR: 0.30; CI 95%: 0.16-0.56) and circulatory system (RR: 0.11; CI 95%: 0.03-0.33).

The characteristics of this type of consultations and of the population group that ask for them are the reasons that their content and the grade of resolution of problems are very far from those of Primary Care.