Choosing among unproven therapies for the treatment of life-threatening covid-19 infection: a clinician’s opinion from the beside

Choosing among unproven therapies for the treatment of life-threatening covid-19 infection: a clinician’s opinion from the beside

Raschke RA

No abstract available. Article truncated after 150 words. We are clearly in unprecedented times. As clinicians watch patients die from COVID-19 infection in the ICU, many feel they cannot wait for clinical trials to prove that various proposed therapies are efficacious. Treatments for which any rationale suggest the possibility of benefit are being administered to patients and the literature abounds with reports of case series or poorly-designed observational trials in which small numbers of patients seem to have favorable outcomes when given these unproven therapies (1). In many cases, these reports are made globally available via social networking without the benefit of peer-review or are being published despite severe methodological flaws that would not have been acceptable prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Standard therapy for COVID-19 has recently been published by the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, which have taken a standard, conservative, evidence-based approach (2). But many clinicians are not able to maintain such equipoise in the face of …

2020

heparin, therapy, coronavirus, hydroxychloroquine, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, TPA, Cytokine storm, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, convalescent serum

DOI: 10.13175/swjpcc026-20

Southwest Journal of Pulmonary and Critical Care

Arizona Thoracic Society

Medical emergencies. Critical care. Intensive care. First aid, General works