ADVANTAGES OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY RECORD KEEPING IN ENT SURGERY VERSUS CONVENTIONAL PHOTO RECORD KEEPING

Objective: to introduce a duplicate digital photo image record keeping system by replacing old conventional photo-slides to avoid maintenance problems of conventional photo-slides library and establish a privacy policy to assure secure retrieval.material and methods: this comparative study was conducted at e.n.t department of khyber teaching hospital, peshawar from june, 2004 to june, 2005. in this project, the photo slides (chrome film transparency) captured by a conventional camera were converted into digital data format on a compact disc (cd) by a process called digitalization. a total of 60 photo-slides captured on chrome-file were selected from our photographic record library.result: the digitized photo-image proved to be advantageous over conventional photo-slide management in record keeping, being easily manageable via computer for easy retrieval. all the environmental and handling losses of the conventional photo-slides can be avoided with this method of duplication.conclusion: it is concluded that digital photographs are useful tools for the evaluation of the patient's pre-operative and postoperative photo-images as a ready and reliable reference for the comparison