[Remote consultation: information for Primary Care physicians]. / Consulta no presencial en tiempos de coronavirus: información para médicos de Atención Primaria.

With the current pandemic, there is now the possibility of using technological tools, such as teleconsultation or remote consultation. In rural or even semi-urban areas, access to medical services may be restricted due to transportation problems. In other places access to the consultations is limited to avoid contagion from the patient or healthcare personnel. This is why technological solutions are used to allow us to monitor our patients remotely, especially in the case of chronic patients, or as a form of triage to potential patients with coronavirus. Unfortunately, this type of system has not been used with the same continuity as in other countries, and very often our health personnel do not know the correct way to carry out a teleconsultation (by phone or video). With this document, an initial guide is presented on how to make a teleconsultation in Primary Care.

Rapid eye movement sleep measures of Alzheimer's-type dementia patients and optimally healthy aged individuals.

It has been suggested that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep measures may be useful in the differential diagnosis of affective disorders. To determine what changes, if any, of REM measures occur in Alzheimer's dementia we examined the REM sleep of nine control and nine mild, nine moderate, and nine severe dementia subjects with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). Control and mild and moderate AD groups were screened to exclude major depression. REM latency, REM time, REM activity, and REM density were examined. Results indicated that REM sleep measures are minimally affected by mild dementia. None of the REM sleep variables reported here successfully discriminated mild AD subjects from controls. However, REM time and REM latency were significantly affected in later stages of dementia. Total time in REM and REM latency successfully classified control and moderate-severe AD patients. In addition, the pattern of REM density across the night was also affected by severity of dementia. The results of this study, when compared to published REM measure findings in major depression, indicate that with proper cautions REM sleep measures may prove useful in the differential diagnosis of dementia and depression in geriatric patient populations.