It is also important for the medical community to keep current guidelines up-to-date and adapt to new changes that occur from time to time.
Deal with COVID-19 (New Coronavirus Infection) A pandemic is not only a very difficult experience for all of us in the medical industry, but also a rich one. It taught us how corrupt we can be when dealing with new illnesses. As with any pandemic practice, guidelines are published by various scientific and regulatory agencies to help us manage our illness.
In this pandemic, various guidelines have been developed by national organizations such as the Indian Medical Research Council (ICMR) and the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), and by international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. .. (CDC) America, etc. It is important to recognize and recognize that these guidelines are not written in stone and are not necessarily gospel truths and can turn out to be incorrect as you learn more about the disease. There is. This also happened in this case.
Not all people need masking, as many scientific groups, including WHO, initially believed that the virus would not be transmitted from person to person or spread aerosols, to name just a few. As we learned more about the disease, we found that all of this was wrong.
There were also several guidelines for the prevention and treatment of this disease in the early stages. This includes a loud cry for the use of hydroxychloroquine for both prevention and treatment of the disease. Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and zinc that boost immunity. Use of antibiotics such as doxycycline and azithromycin, antivirals such as oseltamivir, and the anthelmintic ivermectin. However, they could not withstand a period of scientific scrutiny and are currently being withdrawn from all recommendations.
There were also very strong recommendations / guidelines for the use of remdesivir, plasma therapy, and the immunosuppressant monoclonal antibody tocilizumab, which were later changed or discontinued. Unfortunately, some of these recommendations and some misunderstandings of these recommendations have led to a serious shortage of these drugs, leading to hoarding and black markets due to unpleasant factors in society.
Based on all this experience, the multi-million dollar question that comes to mind is, “What is the role of guidelines in such a pandemic?”
My answer to this is that while the guidelines do play a role, they have certain caveats:
a) Guidelines issued by various scientific bodies and regulators are based on the knowledge at the time the guidelines were published.
b) With new illnesses, as seen in this pandemic, information and knowledge about the illness can change very rapidly, and new data may invalidate or change / change old guidelines. There is. Therefore, frequent changes to the guidelines are needed based on scientific data that happened when: COVID-19 (New Coronavirus Infection)
Also.
The medical community should be aware that this is a dynamic process that requires keeping current guidelines up-to-date and making the necessary changes to the management protocol accordingly.
c) It should be recognized that guidelines are a very important tool for unifying the management of a particular disease at a particular point in time, but they do not enforce what to do. As a treating physician, clinical decisions regarding the proper management of a patient need to be made along with guidelines for determining the proper management of a particular individual.
d) If you follow the guidelines, it must be done in a very specific way, you need to be very careful about the use of certain drugs, you need to consider the timing, dose, duration, and deviations from this. serious problem. A specific example of this was the indiscriminate use of steroids, ignoring the details given in the guidelines. This unfortunately played a role in inducing diabetes in some people, exacerbating diabetes in others, and causing an epidemic of zygomycosis in the aftermath of the second wave. Of COVID.
As long as we are aware of these warnings, guidelines are certainly an important tool provided by science and regulators to guide healthcare professionals in proper management of their illness at specific times. But they should never be regarded as unchanging gospel truths.
The author is the chairman of Manipal Hospital. The expressed views are personal.
Guidelines key to ensuring uniform treatment protocol, but can be improved upon-Health News , Firstpost Source link Guidelines key to ensuring uniform treatment protocol, but can be improved upon-Health News , Firstpost
