[ effectiveness of contact thermography in the diagnosis]

ABSTRACT

Making decisions on buying and using different diagnostic and therapeutic equipments, require collection and analysis of appropriate information and performing a comprehensive systematic studies considering the safety, effectiveness and cost effectiveness of the technologies. The current study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of contact thermography technique in the diagnosis of different diseases. This study was conducted as a systematic review. All of the relevant databases, bibliography of related papers, and companies' websites were searched using appropriate search strategies and keywords. To evaluate the quality of selected papers, CASP tool was applied by two experts and their choices were discussed to reach the final decision. In this study, 308 papers were recovered in total using different databases and search techniques. Considering the research selection criteria, 14 papers were recognized as suitable and categorized into three groups of papers related to the breast cancer, DVT and others. The results show although contact thermography is a safe, rapid and cheap technique to be used in screening and diagnosis of different diseases, current studies do not show any acceptable diagnostic value compared to other diagnostic techniques. It is recommended to use the contact thermography as a complementary technique. More research is proposed to be performed in this area