Teledentistry for Improving Oral Medicine Diagnosis: A Systematic Review

Teledentistry is an application that delivers dental care, consultations, treatment plans, and follow-up through electronic transmission from distant locations that can be done in real-time or offline. This article presents a systematic review of the use of teledentistry to overcome diagnosis difficulties in the field of oral medicine. Electronic databases were searched to find appropriate articles written in English that were published from March 2009 to March 2019. Literature searches were conducted from relevant databases, such as PubMed/Medline, SpringerLink, ProQuest, and Science Direct. The strategies consisted of subject and keywords searches. Among the 100 potential articles observed, only 7 articles met the inclusion criteria. These articles demonstrated the ability of using teledentistry in the field of oral medicine in remote areas. Most of the studies used smartphone teledentistry applications to perform consultations and clinical examinations, diagnose oral lesions, and make oral medicine referrals. This systematic review acknowledged scientific literature in the use of teledentistry as a method to enhance diagnosis in the field of oral medicine. Further study is needed to elaborate on teledentistry usage in oral medicine