Work Group Report: COVID-19: Unmasking Telemedicine.

Telemedicine adoption has rapidly accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Telemedicine provides increased access to medical care and helps to mitigate risk by conserving personal protective equipment and providing for social/physical distancing to continue to treat patients with a variety of allergic and immunologic conditions. During this time, many allergy and immunology clinicians have needed to adopt telemedicine expeditiously in their practices while studying the complex and variable issues surrounding its regulation and reimbursement. Some concerns have been temporarily alleviated since March 2020 to aid with patient care in the setting of COVID-19. Other changes are ongoing at the time of this publication. Members of the Telemedicine Work Group in the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) completed a telemedicine literature review of online and Pub Med resources through May 9, 2020, to detail Pre-COVID-19 telemedicine knowledge and outline up-to-date telemedicine material. This work group report was developed to provide guidance to allergy/immunology clinicians as they navigate the swiftly evolving telemedicine landscape.

Indoor fire ant sting attacks: a risk for frail elders.

OBJECTIVE: We have previously reported 10 indoor sting attacks by imported fire ants, most of which involved frail elderly people in the Southeastern United States. Since the range of these insects is expanding and attacks often attract media attention, we hypothesized that additional attacks of which we were unaware may have occurred and were reported in local newspapers. METHODS: We searched the archives from 1989 until 2004 of 182 US newspapers in fire ant endemic areas in 10 states. RESULTS: Ten additional cases of indoor fire ant sting attacks were reported in local newspapers between 1991 and 2004. This brings the total to 16 attacks on adults and four on infants. Most adult attacks occurred in long-term care facilities, but three involved hospitalized patients. Morbidity ranged from nightmares to death in seven adults. One of the infants died and two suffered long-term morbidity. Six of the 20 sting victims died within 1 week of the attack. Seven of the 10 attacks reported in newspapers did not result in significant medical consequences, as compared with only two of the 10 attacks in previously published reports. CONCLUSION: Increasing numbers of indoor fire ant sting attacks are occurring in the United States, and frail elderly people and infants are at risk. They should be removed from indoor areas where ants are present until the ants are eradicated.