Prevention of work-related skin diseases: teledermatology as an alternative approach in occupational screenings

Background Prevention of occupational skin diseases is of high socio-economic impact. Implementing teledermatology into preventive occupational screenings holds obvious advantages; nevertheless, studies concerning this subject are scarce. Objectives The present cross-sectional study was aimed at determining if results of a teledermatological examination are equally sensitive and specific at detecting minimal skin lesions as the conventional face-to-face examination. Methods The skin condition of the hands of 100 male wet workers was assessed in a face-to-face examination and a tele-examination by means of a score for minimal skin lesions. Results The comparison of the total score values that each participant received in face-to-face examination with those obtained in tele-examination proved the skin condition to be estimated significantly worse when seen in tele-examination (P < 0.0001). The median values of the sum totals and the median values for secondary lesions were higher in the tele-examination than in the face-to-face examination. Conclusions Our findings show a tendency in tele-examination to assess the skin condition more critically in comparison with face-to-face examination. The teledermatological examination is sufficiently sensitive in detecting early signs of hand eczema, whereas signs for chronicity may get overestimated.