Irish doctors and lyme

LoveCoke

Is there some conspiracy by doctors in reland against the recognition of lyme disease? i heard someone talk on radio who said her daughter has it and Irish doctors do notwant to know. Why would that be? What would theyb have to gain? Are the people who think that in some sort of cult or something.? what is their insistence that the doctors do not want to know about?

I am genuinely interested especially in the why

Vorsprung

I'm not aware of a conspiracy against the diagnosis of Lyme disease. Can't say I've come across it though I believe it is more common than it used to be (on my phone so don't have numbers/stats).

LoveCoke

Vorsprung wrote: »

I'm not aware of a conspiracy against the diagnosis of Lyme disease. Can't say I've come across it though I believe it is more common than it used to be (on my phone so don't have numbers/stats).

the lady said there was a lyme conference in Ireland but no irish doctors attended

Nephinbeg

There's no conspiracy, its a real condition that is relatively easy to treat. The problem is that many patients with chronic, vague symptoms (the website quoted has 73 symptoms listed) self-diagnose with non-existent Lyme disease with the help of the internet and a minority of doctors who often put patients on unnecessary courses of expensive longterm IV antibiotics.

There is a large political movement in the US to have these courses of antibiotics paid for by insurance companies, who of course refuse to based on the lack of evidence that anything longer than a month of treatment is required. This is the source of a lot of the internet noise on the topic.

A quick google of one the Doctors mentioned on the conferences page, Dr. Burrascano, reveals he was on trial in the US over negligence charges of medicating patients on antibiotics for years. This may be one of the reasons that Doctors here stayed away. I can't speak for them though.

Alun

There's a similar thing going on in Germany with all kinds of specialized, Lyme clinics sprouting up putting people on courses of very strong antibiotics for 6 months or more often causing more problems than the original condition. There have been some documentaries on German TV about the phenomenon recently.

RobFowl

LoveCoke wrote: »

the lady said there was a lyme conference in Ireland but no irish doctors attended

Tuesday afternoon and all the working day Wed !
Not approved for CME either...
Not too much surprise at a poor attendance!!!

LoveCoke

She mentioned a doctor in washington. said her daughter is very ill and irish doctors say it is MS. she said they only do elisa here and west blot is necessary.

Biologic

Well I was talking to a different lady and she says Irish doctors are great at Lyme.

pc11

For patients with persistent, non-specific symptoms, I have the sense that some doctors are quick to conclude that psychological factors are primary. Now, they may well be so in some patients, but in my own experience, they are too quick to conclude this and send patients away. I have some experience of this myself.

I think there may be a feeling that Lyme disease is almost a trendy American news-driven illness and doesn't really occur here. That said, I have a friend who had very serious Lyme and needed repeated long-term treatment before eventually recovering. But, he went through hell for some years.

One doctor I spoke to said he would not necessarily trust Irish labs with some tests, probably as they see some things so rarely. He was particularly talking about malaria.

opinion guy

Don't have any opinion either way but I stumbled onto this just now for any who are interested:

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a120/