TY - JOUR
T1 - Telemedicine for screening diabetic retinopathy
T2 - The NO BLIND Italian multicenter study
AU - NO BLIND Study Group
AU - Sasso, Ferdinando Carlo
AU - Pafundi, Pia Clara
AU - Gelso, Aldo
AU - Bono, Valeria
AU - Costagliola, Ciro
AU - Marfella, Raffaele
AU - Sardu, Celestino
AU - Rinaldi, Luca
AU - Galiero, Raffaele
AU - Acierno, Carlo
AU - de Sio, Chiara
AU - Adinolfi, Luigi Elio
N1 - © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
PY - 2018/12/13
Y1 - 2018/12/13
N2 - AIMS: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) represents the main cause of blindness among adults in the industrialized Countries. Use of telemedicine could offer an easy, smart specialist fundus oculi examination, as well as putting in a screening programme many patients who otherwise would be excluded.MATERIALS AND METHODS: The NO BLIND is a transversal, multicentre, observational study. Its pilot phase involved nine public outpatient clinics for 6 months. As endpoint of the study, we assessed the prevalence of DR by retinography in a subset of the Italian population. Patients' fundus oculi photos were performed by trained diabetologists through a digital smart ophthalmoscope.RESULTS: According to our endpoint, in the final study population (n = 1461), obtained excluding patients for whom retinography was not able to provide any diagnosis, DR prevalence was equal to 15.5%. According to the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve performed, we can observe how retinography appears a highly accurate method to detect DR (AUROC 0.971, 95% confidence interval, 0.954-0.989), with a specificity of the 100% and a sensitivity of the 94.3%.CONCLUSIONS: Our findings, in an Italian setting, confirm main data in the literature about DR prevalence. Hence, telemedicine could represent an accurate, fast, and cheap method for screening of DR.
AB - AIMS: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) represents the main cause of blindness among adults in the industrialized Countries. Use of telemedicine could offer an easy, smart specialist fundus oculi examination, as well as putting in a screening programme many patients who otherwise would be excluded.MATERIALS AND METHODS: The NO BLIND is a transversal, multicentre, observational study. Its pilot phase involved nine public outpatient clinics for 6 months. As endpoint of the study, we assessed the prevalence of DR by retinography in a subset of the Italian population. Patients' fundus oculi photos were performed by trained diabetologists through a digital smart ophthalmoscope.RESULTS: According to our endpoint, in the final study population (n = 1461), obtained excluding patients for whom retinography was not able to provide any diagnosis, DR prevalence was equal to 15.5%. According to the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve performed, we can observe how retinography appears a highly accurate method to detect DR (AUROC 0.971, 95% confidence interval, 0.954-0.989), with a specificity of the 100% and a sensitivity of the 94.3%.CONCLUSIONS: Our findings, in an Italian setting, confirm main data in the literature about DR prevalence. Hence, telemedicine could represent an accurate, fast, and cheap method for screening of DR.
U2 - 10.1002/dmrr.3113
DO - 10.1002/dmrr.3113
M3 - Article
C2 - 30548967
SP - e3113
JO - Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews
JF - Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews
SN - 1520-7552
ER -