Teleconsultation for pediatric patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus during the COVID-19 pandemic: experience of a university hospital in Brazil

Objective: Evaluate the impact of teleconsultation on glycemic control and prevention of acute complications related to diabetes mellitus in children and adolescents treated in a reference hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Method: Descriptive study of data from pediatric diabetic patients who received teleconsulta-tion between April and September 2020. Results: During this period, 143 diabetic patients were evaluated, with a median of 3.4 telecon-sultations per patient in the studied period, requiring adjustment of insulin doses in 84.6% of cases. The hospital admission rate was 8,4% due to diabetic decompensation. The metabolic con-trol (HbA1c) became worse in 46% of the sample and improved in 37%. Conclusion: The teleconsultation promoted health care for patients with diabetes mellitus dur-ing the COVID-19 pandemic but was not able to guarantee adequate glycemic control. (c) 2022 Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).