Our experience with telemedicine in traumatology and orthopedics

Telemedicine widely takes root in all branches of modern medicine including traumatology and orthopedics. The main goal of this work was to present our experience with asynchronic teleconsultation in daily clinical practice, in particular in the treatment of polytrauma patients.

Throughout 2000 and 2003, we carried out 144 teleconsultations for 92 men and 52 women (age range three months to 80 years). Of these, we were the inquiring party in 51 cases, the consulting one in 88 cases, and the mediator in five cases. Time passed till the completion of consultations ranged from 12 to 24 hours.

The number of consultants was one, two, three, and more in 99, 22, 3, and 15 teleconsultations, respectively. The most common questions (n=128) were those of treatment tactics. In the majority of cases, the consultant approved of the diagnosis suggested by the inquirer and formulated or corrected the scheme of the treatment. The majority of teleconsultations were concerned with various problems of traumatology (n=83) and orthopedics (n=31). For each clinical case, we received a mean of 2.6 replies (range 1 to 8). The effectiveness of the suggested treatment methods accounted for approximately 80% in final decision making. Teleconsultations provided considerable benefits in the treatment of polytrauma patients, including decreases in in-hospital treatment necessities (16%), in complication rates (9.2%) and their severity, the relative risk of developing complications (10%), and in the need for re-hospitalization (0.4%).

In view of our experience, we recommend that asynchronic consultations on the basis of the Internet-technology be more commonly used in the treatment of polytrauma patients.