A Review on the use of Telemedicine in Glaucoma and Possible Roles in COVID-19 Outbreak.

We review the use of telemedicine in glaucoma and its possible roles in the COVID-19 outbreak. We performed literature search of published articles of teleglaucoma on May 12, 2020, using search terms including "telemedicine" and "glaucoma", limited to human studies, English language and published over the prior 10 years. This search strategy yielded a total of 14 relevant articles after manual curation. Of the 14 articles, 4 were from the same randomized control trial, 7 were prospective studies, 2 were retrospective studies,1 was descriptive analysis, and 1 was cost-effective analysis. Seven discussed the common ophthalmologic measurements used in teleglaucoma. Four demonstrated the cost effectiveness of the use of teleglaucoma and three articles investigated patient satisfaction with the use of teleglaucoma. Three articles investigated the correlation between teleglaucoma and face-to-face clinics. Five articles discussed the current use and opportunities of teleglaucoma. When compared to in-person care, teleglaucoma is more time- cost-effective, shows high patient satisfaction and fair to good agreement with in-person care; however, there is great variation in the reported sensitivity of glaucoma screening, warranting further studies to establish its efficacy. For glaucoma management, both the sensitivity and specificity must be further improved before it could be put into extensive use. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile for us to explore the possible extensive application of teleglaucoma in monitoring 'glaucoma suspects' and maintaining glaucoma follow-up during a pandemic outbreak to reduce the possible risk of transmission of infection.