Teledentistry in the Management of Patients with Dental and Temporomandibular Disorders

Table 1

Summary of the studies discussed.

Authors	Title	Subunit	Modality	Oral disease	Primary outcome reached	Strengths	Limitations
Petruzzi and De Benedittis	WhatsApp: a telemedicine platform for facilitating remote oral medicine consultation and improving clinical examinations	Teleconsultation/telediagnosis	Mobile health care services	Malignant and benign oral lesions	Yes	Comparison with the clinicopathologic diagnosis/sample size	No regulation and standardization of quality images
Ignatius and Perälä	Use of videoconferencing for consultation in dental prosthetics and oral rehabilitation	Teleconsultation	Synchronous	Prosthetic or oral rehabilitation treatment	Yes	—	Small sample size
Salazar-Fernandez et al.	Telemedicine as an effective tool for the management of temporomandibular joint disorders	Teleconsultation	Asynchronous	TMJD	Yes	Multicenter/sample size	—
Exposto et al.	Remote physical examination for temporomandibular disorders	Teleconsultation/telediagnosis	Synchronous	Myalgia and arthralgia due to TMJD	Yes	Comparison with standard examination	Small sample size
Carrard et al.	Telediagnosis of oral lesions in primary care: the EstomatoNet Program	Telediagnosis	Asynchronous	Malignant and benign oral lesions	—	Sample size	No comparison with standard examination
AlShaya et al.	Reliability of mobile phone teledentistry in dental diagnosis and treatment planning in mixed dentition	Telediagnosis	Asynchronous	Dental caries	Yes	Examination of the oral cavity based on WHO criteria/comparison with standard examination	Restricted age group 6–9 years (no data on permanent teeth)
Kohara et al.	Is it feasible to use smartphone images to perform telediagnosis of different stages of occlusal caries lesions?	Telediagnosis	Asynchronous	Dental caries	Yes	Comparison with standard examination	All the photographic images were taken by the same operator
Sunny et al.	A smart tele-cytology point-of-care platform for oral cancer screening	Telediagnosis	Asynchronous	Oral malignant lesions	Yes	Comparison with conventional cytology	Small sample size
Estai et al.	Teledentistry as a novel pathway to improve dental health in school children: a research protocol for a randomised controlled trial	Teletriage	Asynchronous	Dental care	Study ongoing	Comparison with standard examination	—
Kopycka-Kedzierawski et al.	Dental screening of preschool children using teledentistry: a feasibility study	Teletriage	Asynchronous	Dental care	Yes	Comparison with standard examination	Restricted to preschool children
Kopycka-Kedzierawski and McLaren	Advancement of teledentistry at the University of Rochester’s Eastman Institute for Oral Health	Teletriage	Synchronous	Dental care	Ongoing	Sample size	No comparison with standard examination
Brucoli et al.	The use of teleradiology for triaging of maxillofacial trauma	Teletriage	Asynchronous	Maxillofacial trauma	Yes	Comparison with standard examination	—
Giudice et al.	Can teledentistry improve the monitoring of patients during the Covid-19 dissemination?	Telemonitoring	Mobile health care services	Oral diseases	N/A	—	No comparison with standard examination

TMJD: temporomandibular joint disorder; N/A: not applicable; WHO: World Health Organization.