Overdiagnosis and overtreatment of Lyme disease are associated with inappropriate use of health services, avoidable treatment-related illness, and substantial disability and distress.
need to go to the hospital for a general overhauling in addition to serum administration. And it may be discovered that serum treatment is not indicated. In maintaining a brief for the medical treatment I do not wish to have it appear that surgery has no place in treatment, but I wish to emphasize most emphatically the fact that many patients who have been operated on are by no means cured and that they often require prolonged and careful medical treatment to restore them to health.
RESULTS OF SERUM TREATMENTThe serum has been used in the treatment of more than 3,000 patients having hyperthyroidism of dif¬ ferent degrees. From the classification given earlier it will be seen that these patients cover the very severe cases as well as the mild, early cases. The precise result which will be obtained with any given patient cannot be precisely foretold. Such a. situation con¬ fronts the physician, however, in every field of thera¬ peutics. Experience with the serum and with the disease is an important factor in the treatment. Physi¬ cians are occasionally unwilling to take the time to learn the necessary precautions and nearly always come to grief. I recently saw a patient whose physician had ignored the careful directions given him and persisted in giving a full tube of the serum every day for a week in beginning the treatment in spite of the fact that each injection caused a reaction of increasing severity, and no time was allowed for these to sub¬ side before repeating the dose. Such carelessness is most culpable. The patient was in a very uncomfort¬ able condition with a continuous temperature of from 101.5 to 102, sleepless, nauseated and with a general cutaneous erythema. Each point of injection was represented by large, red, indurated, intensely painful areas.
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