The study in this issue of JAMA Surgery by Kummerow Broman et al¹ is highly relevant to today’s surgeons. The stated aim is to conduct a “pragmatic” investigation into the use of photography in postoperative care, which is commendable, since such care is already widely conducted via smartphone. The most true-to-life scenario would be a surgeon evaluating his or her own patients’ wounds, as firsthand knowledge of the operation and the patient’s underlying risk factors for surgical site infection can be factored into decision making in a way that is lost in hypothetical scenarios (ie, pretest probability can be deployed to improve the positive or negative predictive value of the photographs). Nevertheless, health information technologies are popular with both patients and clinicians,² and the surgical community needs richer data on both the effectiveness of such tools and their potential pitfalls.

Kummerow Broman等[ ^1]在本期《JAMA外科》中的研究与当今的外科医生高度相关。明确的目的是对摄影在术后护理中的使用进行“务实”的调查，这是值得称赞的，因为这种护理已经通过智能手机广泛进行了。最真实的情况是外科医生评估他或她自己患者的伤口，因为对手术的第一手了解以及患者手术部位感染的潜在危险因素可以以决策的方式加以考虑，而这可能会丢失假设场景（即可以使用预测试概率来提高照片的正面或负面预测价值）。不过，健康信息技术在患者和临床医生中都很受欢迎，²和外科界需要有关此类工具的有效性及其潜在陷阱的更丰富数据。