Introduction:

The national program of Telemedicine - Electroencephalography (EEG) represents an important step in the approach of auxiliary means of neurological diagnosis to the rural population that had to travel long distances making a great economic effort.

Objectives:

To carry out a descriptive-comparative study covering ECG results for the 2015-2016 period and the current status until 2019. To establish its usefulness as an auxiliary means of remote diagnosis. To determine strengths and weaknesses.

Methodology:

Description of EEG from hospitals of the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare from 2015-2016, and comparison with results until 2019 using the international 10-20 system, the interpretation was performed by the same team of electroencephalograph neurologists. The report recorded in a computer file was returned to the referring physician for its therapeutic implementation.

Results:

Until 2016, there were 9 centers to perform EEG but this number increased to 18 in 2019. The number of EEGs performed was 858 until 2016 and 12,139 until 2019. There was an increase in requests for remote assistance and available equipment, covering more regions and a greater number of patients. There were 60% normal and 22.8% pathological findings where focal findings with secondary generalization represented the majority. In 17%, the results were returned for being incomplete and unspecific.

Conclusions:

One hundred eighty-eight pathological results were found up to 2016 and 2,747 until 2019. In the pathological findings, the most frequent in both periods was partial epilepsy with secondary generalization. There were no differences regarding sex and age groups in both periods. The challenges are the identification of epilepsy as an independent nosological entity, implementation of a teleconsultation system and further expansion of the coverage area.

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