Diagnostic accuracy of telemedicine for detection of surgical site infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The Sars-CoV-2 pandemic catalysed integration of telemedicine worldwide. This systematic review assesses it's accuracy for diagnosis of Surgical Site Infection (SSI). Databases were searched for telemedicine and wound infection studies. All types of studies were included, only paired designs were taken to meta-analysis. QUADAS-2 assessed methodological quality. 1400 titles and abstracts were screened, 61 full text reports were assessed for eligibility and 17 studies were included in meta-analysis, mean age was 47.1 +/- 13.3 years. Summary sensitivity and specificity was 87.8% (95% CI, 68.4-96.1) and 96.8% (95% CI 93.5-98.4) respectively. The overall SSI rate was 5.6%. Photograph methods had lower sensitivity and specificity at 63.9% (95% CI 30.4-87.8) and 92.6% (95% CI, 89.9-94.5). Telemedicine is highly specific for SSI diagnosis is highly specific, giving rise to great potential for utilisation excluding SSI. Further work is needed to investigate feasibility telemedicine in the elderly population group.

Automated summary

This systematic review assesses the accuracy of telemedicine in diagnosing Surgical Site Infection (SSI). The study found that telemedicine has high specificity in excluding SSI, but the accuracy of photograph methods is lower. Further research is needed to investigate the feasibility of telemedicine in the elderly population group.