Telemedicine approach for psoriasis management, time for application? A systematic review of published studies.

Dahy, Abdullah; El-Qushayri, Amr Ehab; Mahmoud, Abdalla Reda; Al-Kelany, Tareq Adel; Salman, Samar

Psoriasis is a common chronic inflammatory skin condition. It has a chronic course with multiple evolving relapses and patients require long term treatment and follow up. Teledermatology was introduced for diagnosis, treatment and follow up of chronic diseases. Thus, we performed a systematic review for collecting the evidence regarding the efficacy of telemedicine in psoriasis management. Out of 287 records, we included 7 studies (4 of which were randomized controlled trials). We found that telemedicine alone or combined with usual care had the same or higher efficacy of psoriasis management compared to usual care or control group. We recommend further studies for assessing the pros and cons of this intervention which can replace conventional strategies especially in pandemic times. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.