Lyme Handbook

In the Chesapeake region, where awareness and incidences of Lyme continue to grow, the same old controversy lingers, and always at the patient’s expense.

 When will the medical community get off their high horse and start thinking outside the box.  Adhering to outdated textbooks and guidelines are a disservice to those they are hired to heal.

 The few that do put the patient ahead of themselves and their medical brainwashing are well known to us as Lyme Literate Doctors (LLD).

 Here is one such diamond in the rough:

 Excerpted from The Virginian Pilot ( Posted: 2/21/2010 )

Dr. Geoffrey Gubb practices medicine in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore. He is one of the outlier physicians who believes that Lyme disease can linger for years and that long-term courses of antibiotics are the best treatment for the condition.

The 72-year-old doctor said he treated his first case in 2005, and he has had the disease himself. He says he has treated some 800 people with the disease – from Maryland, Delaware, Florida, Alaska, Kentucky and Tennessee – and has been investigated twice by the Virginia Board of Medicine for going outside recommended guidelines for antibiotic prescriptions and pain medication.

“I began to realize this is not a disease of people who are sitting around watching TV and eating bonbons,” he said.

The difficulty with Lyme disease stems in part from the fact that the blood test used to diagnose it is not always conclusive.

“Everyone wants to go for ‘evidence-based medicine,’ ” Gubb said, “but the problem comes when the evidence is no good. Then evidence-based medicine is nonsense. You default to what we have done for thousands of years. You listen to the patient.”

Still, he knows he is in the minority.

Full story at: http://hamptonroads.com/2010/02/chronic-lyme-disease-debate-over-diagnosis-treatment

~ by Rob on February 21, 2010.

Posted in Lyme, Popular
Tags: Ct, Doctors, Florida, IDSA, Lyme, Maryland, Virginia