MedPageToday Video at the link – “For the people hurting and suffering, they need treatment yesterday,” says long COVID expert.
Faust: Somebody asked a question about how do you advise doctors who are treating long COVID?
I think that’s really difficult, because people want to do something and they want to acknowledge that something’s happening. Then I think that they get creative, and that’s not in the patient’s interest, even though their heart is in the right place.
How hard is it to tell our colleagues, even for you when they come to you as an expert on this, to tell them, “Actually, don’t do much.” I mean, what do you tell them?
Al-Aly: It is really hard because management at this time is symptomatic, right? Somebody comes in with tachycardia and you’d treat them with beta-blockers, right? You’re not getting at the root cause of it; you’re literally treating the tachycardia with a drug that slows heart rates.
And it is hard. It is hard. For example, there’s also no treatment for fatigue. Like, what do you do for fatigue? What do you do for brain fog? How do you improve brain fog? So there is literally not much there in our toolbox to offer these patients and the providers who are caring for them.