Telemedicine during the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic lockdown: Monitoring stress and quality of sleep in patients with epilepsy.

SARS-CoV-2 pandemic heavily hit the western healthcare system saturating the hospital beds in wards and clogging the emergency departments. To avoid the collapse of Italian hospitals, office visits to outpatients were limited to emergencies and the general population went in a lockdown state. Physicians had to approach new problems in the management of chronic patients who could not leave their homes. In our experience as epilepsy clinic, the use of telemedicine was of crucial importance for monitoring our patients: phone call during lockdown let us monitor the stability of our 38 patients and psychometric parameters and habits that could influence seizures frequency. In particular, we found that in our patients, sleep quality was low resulting in high daily sleepiness and associated high stress levels. Secondly, we found an increase in daily screen hours and an association with daily sleepiness. In conclusion, we report our experience in managing people with epilepsy during the lockdown, underlining the utility of telemedicine as a valid monitoring tool and the necessity of a psychometric and behavioral screening.

Appendicitis in Children in a Large Italian COVID-19 Pandemic Area.

Introduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically changed the routine activities of pediatric surgical centers, and it determined the reduction of admissions in the pediatric emergency departments (PED). We reviewed the records of patients affected by acute appendicitis (AA) during the COVID-19 pandemic period in a large Italian COVID-19 pandemic area. Methods: Data regarding demographics, age, macroscopic and microscopic findings, and time between symptom onset and PED admission of patients affected by confirmed AA in the period between March and April 2020 were considered. The data were compared with those obtained during the same period of 2019, 2018, and 2017 in the included centers. Data were quoted as median (range) or absolute number. Non-parametric statistical tests were used to compare groups. A p ≤ 0.05 was regarded as significant. Since only anonymous data have been used and the data storage meets current data protection regulations, ethical committee approval was not required for this study. Results: Eighty-six patients underwent surgical appendectomy for AA between February 20th, 2020 and April 20th, 2020; 32.5% were complicated appendicitis and 67.5% were uncomplicated. Fifty-three patients were males and 33 were females. Patients' age ranged from 3 to 17 years and the median age was 10 years. The median time between the onset of symptoms and the admission in PED was 1.85 days. The average time between the symptom onset and PED admission was 1.8 days. Conclusions: Although fear from the COVID-19 pandemic determined a delayed diagnosis of serious pediatric diseases, the increasing prevalence and severity of AA were not demonstrated in the most COVID-19-affected areas of Italy.