Telemedicine has been widely implemented during the COVID-19 global pandemic to enable continuity of care of chronic illnesses. We modified our general neurology clinic to be conducted using remote audio-only telephone consultations. We included all patients over a 10-week period who agreed to both a telephone consultation and a questionnaire afterwards in order to ascertain the patient’s perspective of the experience. There were 212 participants consisting of men (43.8%) and women (56.2%). The mean ± standard deviation of age was 47.8 ± 17.0 (range 17–93) years. For the most part, patients found remote consultations either “just as good” (67.1%) or “better” (9.0%) than face-to-face consultations. Those who deemed it to be “not as good” were significantly older (52.3 ± 17.9 years vs. 46.6 ± 16.6 years, <i>p =</i>0.045) or were more likely to have a neurological disorder that required clinical examination, namely, a neuromuscular condition (66.7%, <i>p =</i> 0.002) or an undiagnosed condition (46.7%, <i>p =</i> 0.031). At the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic, most patients were satisfied with remote consultations. The positive feedback for remote consultations needs to be verified outside of this unique scenario because the results were likely influenced by the patients’ apprehension to attend the hospital amongst other factors.

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Irrational prescribing of PPIs continues both in hospital and in general practise. It is imperative that the side-effects of these medicines are weighed against the benefit and cost effectiveness, especially in the elderly population where polypharmacy remains a substantial concern.

BackgroundPregnancy in women with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is associated with an increased risk of congenital malformations, obstetric complications and neonatal morbidity. This study aims to investigate maternal, perinatal and neonatal outcomes of pregnancies in women with onset of T1DM less than 18 years of age.MethodsThis retrospective cohort study extracted data regarding prenatal, intrapartum and postnatal outcomes of pregnancies in women with onset of T1DM<18 years identified from the diabetes in pregnancy register at University Maternity Hospital Limerick, treated from July 1, 2007 to July 1, 2017.ResultsSeventeen women with onset of T1DM <18 years gave birth to 23 live infants during the period studied. 73.9% of pregnancies were unplanned. Only 21.7% of pregnancies took preconceptual folic acid. 60.9% of infants required treatment for hypoglycemia.ConclusionThe high prevalence of unplanned pregnancy and poor uptake of prepregnancy care must be improved on in order to improve outcomes for this high-risk group.