OITE Tumor

This app, available only for iPhone and Android, is marketed as a “buzzword” study guide for the orthopaedic in-training exam (OITE) tumor topics.  The app is divided into 5 sections: about, index, flashcards, quiz, and contact.  The index lists 78 tumor buzzwords, such as zebra lines, PNET, Batson’s Plexus, Codman triangle, etc.  Unfortunately, when testing on an iPhone 4S device the app ran very slow and crashed at times, despite its very limited content (text and images).  For screens in which content did load, images were presented with a text description that include spelling errors at times.  The information provided for each topic is brief (2-5 sentences).  No references of additional information is provided for any of the topics.  The flashcards present a gallery of thumbnail images for selection. Once again, the images take up to 30 seconds to load, and some do not load at all, thereby negating the purpose of the app for quickly reviewing buzzwords.  In addition, the answers to the image pathology would not appear, and thus there is no way to check one’s knowledge against the real answer. The quiz section includes a listing of topics with a complete question stem and multiple choice answers and explanations.  Only 10 questions are included.  The contact section provides a phone number, email and website: www.bonetumor.org.  Interestingly, the site appears to be an incredibly detailed, expansive, and valuable listing of bone tumors and their presentation, diagnosis, and treatment accompanied by xray and pathologic images.  Overall, this app appears to address a need among residents for OITE studying, however the implementation ranges from painfully slow to entirely non-functional, rendering this app useless at this point.  I do hope that future versions become more stable and useful since this is a great idea for OITE studying.

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