Le mercredi 28 février 2024, Monsieur Thomas DAMSIN, titulaire d'un Master en Médecine et d’un Certificat de formation à la recherche en sciences médicales, présentera l'examen en vue de l'obtention du grade de Doctorat en médicales, sous la direction de Monsieur Arjen NIKKELS. 

Cette épreuve consistera en la défense publique d'une thèse intitulée : 

"The TELESPOT project: implementation of a teledermoscopy system in primary healthcare centers for early skin cancer detection"

Le jury sera composé de :

Bita DEZFOULIAN (Présidente), Florence LIBON (Secrétaire), Didier GIET, Pierre GILLET, Jo LAMBERT (UZ Gent), Arjen NIKKELS, Albert RUBBEN (Univ. Aachen)

Résumé de la thèse

With the increasing incidence of skin cancer and limited access to specialized care, teledermoscopy (TDS) may represent a useful triage tool for skin cancer detection. Hence, we performed an evaluation of a 3-year TDS project in primary health care centers in Belgium (TELESPOT project).

A total of 9 PHCs were trained to use an inhouse developed smartphone-based application for macroscopic and dermoscopic acquisition of skin lesions, subsequently analyzed independently by two investigators in a tertiary university skin cancer center. The primary outcome was the proportion of high-priority management (HPM) recommendations.

Over 3 years, a total of 478 lesions were analyzed in 335 patients: initial phase (105 lesions from 76 patients in 6 PHCs) and extension phase (373 lesions from 259 patients in 9 PHCs). An HPM was recommended in 9.2% (initial and extension phases: 7.6% and 15.7%, respectively). The dermoscopic-histological correlation achieved 84.1%. The median delay between HPM and surgery was 9 days.

This TDS project avoided unnecessary tertiary care visits in about 9 out of 10 cases, increased the HPM by a 9-fold in comparison with the conventional care pathway and provided excellent satisfaction levels for PHCs and patients. Long-term participation improved the triage quality for suspect skin lesions by a 2.24-fold.