Jumping Into the Future Using Teledermoscopy

Background . Teledermoscopy uses telecommunication technologies to transfer images of pigmented skin lesions via the Internet for teleconsultation. Design . Clinical and dermoscopic images of 66 and 43 pigmented skin lesions achieved in two consecutive studies were sent by e‐mail to dermatologists with different degrees of experience in dermoscopy for a telediagnosis. All lesions included in these studies were surgically excised and diagnosed histopathologically. Results . The diagnostic concordance between the face‐to‐face diagnosis and the telediagnosis was 91% in the first study, whereas, in the second study, it varied from 76.7%–95.3%. The accuracy of the diagnoses in both studies was not related to the quality of the images, but did highly depend on the level of diagnostic difficulty of a given pigmented skin tumor and on the level of experience of each observer. ???Conclusions. Teleconsultation of dermoscopic images of pigmented skin lesions via e‐mail provides a similar degree of diagnostic accuracy as “face‐to‐face” diagnosis when the diagnosis is made by a dermatologist confident with dermoscopy.