Photo documentation in Dupuytren’s disease surgery

Abstract

Due to the rapid development of technology in the 21st century, the imaging and image processing became available to everyone. High-quality photos can be made by a regular smart phone. The high quality of current photos allows such images to be used in medicine for reporting documentation, remote consultation, as well as evaluation of treatment results. The main objective of this work is to describe rules and introduce standards of digital photography of Dupuytren’s disease surgery for obtaining high-quality photo documents. The materials for our study were represented by more than 60,000 digital photos for the period from 2003 to 2017. After studying, organizing, and processing of images, the optimal conditions, standard projections, and principles of photographing hands of Dupuytren’s disease patients were revealed to obtain the most reliable data. The stage of the disease, the number of palmar aponeurosis cords involved in the pathological process, the presence of changes on the skin (postoperative scars, skin retractions, nodes of the palmar aponeurosis), and finger flexion function can be assessed from photo documents. The data obtained from photos were checked against those obtained from patient examination. The described methods and standards will help in creating a high-quality personal photo and video archive, which is necessary for every practicing surgeon for systematization of observations, evaluation of long-term results, and demonstration of obtained results to colleagues as evidence. The authors are sure that in the nearest future we will become witnesses and participants of creation of a unified global database of clinical observations. The development of this resource will allow the efforts of surgeons from all over the world to be joined in the fight against a common enemy — Dupuytren’s disease.