Telemedicine in acute plastic surgical trauma and burns

Background: Telemedicine is a relatively new development within the UK, but is increasingly useful in many areas of medicine including plastic surgery. Plastic surgery centres often work on a hub-and-spoke basis with many district hospitals referring to one tertiary centre. The Queen Victoria Hospital is one such centre receiving calls from more than 28 hospitals in the Southeast of England resulting in approximately 20 referrals a day. Objective: A telemedicine system was developed to improve trauma management. This study was designed to establish whether digital images were sufficiently accurate enough to aid decision-making. A store-and-forward telemedicine system was devised and the images of 150 trauma referrals evaluated in terms of injury severity and operative priority by each member of the plastic surgical team. Results: Correlation scores for assessed images were high. Accuracy of 'transmitted image' in comparison to injury on examination scored > 97%. Operative priority scores tended to be higher than injury severity. Conclusions: Telemedicine is an accurate method by which to transfer information on plastic surgical trauma including burns.