Diagnostic accuracy of a general practitioner with video-otoscopy collected by a health care facilitator compared to traditional otoscopy.

OBJECTIVE: Video-otoscopy is rapidly developing as a new method to diagnose common ear disease and can be performed by trained health care facilitators as well as by clinicians. This study aimed to compare remote asynchronous assessments of video-otoscopy with otoscopy performed by a general practitioner.

METHOD: Children, aged 2-16 years, attending a health center in Johannesburg, South Africa, were examined. An otologist performed otomicroscopy and a general practitioner performed otoscopy. Video-otoscopy was performed by a health care facilitator and video sequences were stored on a server for assessment by the same general practitioner 4 and 8 weeks later. At all examinations, a diagnosis was set and the tympanic membrane appearance was graded using the OMgrade-scale. The otologist's otomicroscopic diagnosis was set as reference standard to compare the accuracy of the two otoscopic methods.

RESULTS: Diagnostic agreement between otologist's otomicroscopic examination and the general practitioner's otoscopic examination was substantial (kappa 0.66). Agreement between onsite otomicroscopy and the general practitioners asynchronous video assessments were also substantial (kappa 0.70 and 0.80).

CONCLUSION: Video-otoscopy performed by a health care facilitator and assessed asynchronously by a general practitioner had similar or better accuracy compared to face-to-face otoscopy performed by a general practitioner.