key: cord-0894542-i1xigdby
authors: Megna, Matteo; Camela, Elisa; Villani, Alessia; Tajani, Andrea; Fabbrocini, Gabriella; Potestio, Luca
title: Teledermatology: A useful tool also after COVID‐19 era?
date: 2022-04-11
journal: J Cosmet Dermatol
DOI: 10.1111/jocd.14938
sha: 5c9160489ef9b08e1d625af13b4ffd59cad7ac99
doc_id: 894542
cord_uid: i1xigdby

nan

Dear Editor, 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 faceto-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. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Authors declare human ethics approval was not needed for this study.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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