Multidisciplinary Telemedicine Care for Tourette Syndrome: Minireview

Abstract

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood-onset, chronic neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by multiple motor and vocal tics. TS poses a considerable burden on both patients and health care providers, leading to a major detriment of educational success, occupation, and interpersonal relationships. A multidisciplinary, specialist-driven management approach is required due to the complexity of TS. However, access to such specialty care is often dramatically limited by the patients' locations and the specialists' geographic clustering in large urban centers. Telemedicine uses electronic information and communication technology to provide and support health care when distance separates participants. Therefore, we conducted this mini-review to describe the latest information on telemedicine in the assessment and management of TS and discuss the potential contributions to care for TS patients with a multidisciplinary approach. We believe that telemedicine could be a revolutionary method in improving medical access to patients with TS.

Keywords: CBIT; Tourette syndrome; movement disorder; telemedicine; tics.