Home Video Telemetry vs inpatient telemetry: A comparative study looking at video quality

OBJECTIVE: To compare the quality of home video recording with inpatient telemetry (IPT) to evaluate our current Home Video Telemetry (HVT) practice. METHOD: To assess our HVT practice, a retrospective comparison of the video quality against IPT was conducted with the latter as the gold standard. A pilot study had been conducted in 2008 on 5 patients. Patients (n = 28) were included in each group over a period of one year. The data was collected from referral spreadsheets, King’s EPR and telemetry archive. Scoring of the events captured was by consensus using two scorers. The variables compared included: visibility of the body part of interest, visibility of eyes, time of event, illumination, contrast, sound quality and picture clarity when amplified to 200%. Statistical evaluation was carried out using Shapiro–Wilk and Chi-square tests. The P-value of ⩽0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Significant differences were demonstrated in lighting and contrast between the two groups (HVT performed better in both). Amplified picture quality was slightly better in the HVT group. CONCLUSION: Video quality of HVT is comparable to IPT, even surpassing IPT in certain aspects such as the level of illumination and contrast. Results were reconfirmed in a larger sample of patients with more variables. SIGNIFICANCE: Despite the user and environmental variability in HVT, it looks promising and can be seriously considered as a preferable alternative for patients who may require investigation at locations remote from an EEG laboratory.