Teledermatology: A useful tool also after COVID‐19 era?

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic period has definitively changed the routine medical practices. Among the strategies adopted to guarantee patients the best therapeutic outcomes, telemedicine has played a key role, particularly in dermatology.1, 2 Indeed, COVID-19 restriction measures forced dermatologists to reduce their outpatient visits to urgent cases, referring to telemedicine for chronic conditions management.1-4 In this period, dermatologists developed new solutions to guarantee their presence and therapeutic continuity for patients affected by chronic diseases.5, 6 In fact, different modalities of teledermatology services such as video calls, phone calls, WhatsApp and Facebook supporting groups, image evaluation, and e-mails have been developed and implemented during COVID-19 pandemic period in order to reduce the impact of COVID-19 restriction measures on daily clinical practice.5, 6 In this letter, we want to hypothesize future applications and perspectives of teledermatology when the COVID-19 pandemic period will end. Certainly, the reduction of COVID-19 restrictions and the overcome of the social distancing will increase the number of face-to-face consultations, reducing the need for synchronous and asynchronous teleconsultations. However, teledermatology may remain a useful tool to guide and assist patients in their dermatologic conditions and therapies. The use of Facebook and WhatsApp supporting groups and e-mails guided by physicians developed during COVID-19 pandemic will allow to avoid the spreading of fake news and to continuously inform patients about their dermatologic condition. Moreover, teleconsultation may be a useful tool in patients with chronic pathologies to increase treatment compliance. In our opinion, teledermatology may be helpful, especially in chronic diseases such as psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, acne, and hidradenitis since the role of this weapon has been strongly investigated and reported during pandemic for these conditions.7 Psoriasis patients on maintenance therapy with biologics represent one of the major beneficiary of telemedicine due to the feasibility, convenience, and the capacity of saving time and money as demonstrated by Gisondi et al.8 Similar applications of telemedicine may be showed in other chronic dermatological diseases such as atopic dermatitis and hidradenitis suppurativa. In this contest, important limitations remain the incapacity to use video-communication tools or message groups as well as technical issues due to insufficient computerization of ambulatories. Even if the consultations through teledermatology will reduce with the decrease of COVID-19 restrictions, this tool will remain a useful strategy to monitor and assist patients in their disease and their treatment. Moreover, this strategy will remain the main weapon in patients who cannot attend to face-to-face consultation due to quarantine measures and other personal problems who need disease assessment and therapies monitoring as well as several chronic dermatological diseases such as psoriasis may benefit from telemedicine in daily clinical practice. In conclusion, COVID-19 pandemic period has strongly changed the conception of medicine. Among the new strategies developed and implemented to fight against social distancing measures, telemedicine has played a key role. Clinicians should keep in mind the utility of this weapon and the possibility of a future role of teledermatology in daily clinical practice. Surely, teledermatology will remain in dermatologic clinical practice since, thanks to COVID-19 restriction measures, dermatologic clinical practice is changed. Open Access Funding provided by Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. [Correction added on 18 May, after first online publication: CRUI funding statement has been added.] None. Megna Matteo and Villani Alessia involved in conceptualization, validation, visualization, writing—original draft preparation, and writing—review and editing. Elisa Camela and Tajani Andrea involved in data curation, investigation, methodology, visualization, and writing—original draft preparation. Fabbrocini Gabriella involved in conceptualization, validation, visualization, writing—review and editing, and supervision. Luca Potestio involved in data curation, formal analysis, investigation, visualization, and writing—original draft preparation. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript. Authors declare human ethics approval was not needed for this study. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

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