TITLE:
Use of Telemedicine in Postgraduate Pathology Education
AUTHORS:
Asaranti Kar, Tushar Kar, Priyadarshini Biswal, Kaumudee Pattanaik, Pallavi Bhuyan, Rajashree Mallick, B. N. Mohanty
KEYWORDS:
Histopathologic Diagnosis; Postgraduates; Telepathology
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Clinical Medicine,
Vol.4 No.6,
June
19,
2013
ABSTRACT:
Objective: Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication for
medical diagnosis, treatment, health education and research. Telepathology is
diagnostic pathology at a distance. It functions with images viewed on a video
monitor rather than directly through a microscope. Many years have passed since
the evolution of telepathology. But no study has yet been done to evaluate the
benefits postgraduates got through
this. Therefore this study is undertaken to analyse the different impacts of
telepathology on the postgraduate learning. Material and Methods: The study was done in Telemedicine Center of S. C. B. Medical College, Cuttack over a period of 9
years. The telepathology service was carried out by store and forward method
using a CCD, a large computer server and a huge bandwidth network service
(VSAT). The sessions with SGPGI, Lucknow were analysed and the benefits of
postgraduates were studied. Results: The number of sessions held was 95.
Out of which 92 sessions were with SGPGI. It included 202 cases transmitted
from Lucknow and 186 cases from S. C. B. Medical
College, Cuttack. The postgraduates had a chance to exposure to rare cases in
renal pathology, dermatopathology and hepatopathology. The overall concordance
rate with
glass slide diagnosis was 87%. Conclusion: The diagnostic expertise through light
microscopy and tele-images are not the same. But the telepathology system
increased the ability of image analysis, histopathologic diagnosis of our
postgraduates and also exposed them to many rare and interesting cases.