posted                

for other folks who can't comprehend/read how this one copied to our board....Bettyg

quote:

---

Originally posted by lou:
The Daily Times - www.delmarvanow.com - Salisbury, Md._
(http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060911/OPINION03/609110\
321/1014)

Letters to the Editor


Diagnosing Lyme is a complex, difficult process


RE: "Lyme on the rise on Shore, but not doctors to treat it," Aug. 7; and "Few Delmarva physicians trained to recognize Lyme," Aug. 24

Recent letters to the editor have implied physicians who don't prescribe long-term antibiotics for suspected Lyme disease are incompetent.


Nonsense. Lyme patients rarely need prolonged antibiotics .


Our data on 1,500 patients show the vast majority of post-Lyme patients have an inflammatory illness that requires specific interventions following antibiotics -- not antibiotics forever.

Denial or diagnosis of Lyme based on a flawed diagnostic test or no test is wrong.

We often see patients both under- and over-diagnosed using clinical diagnosis alone.

The pathophysiology of chronic Lyme is readily demonstrated by commercially available lab tests looking at the inflammatory basis of the illness.

Be wary of results from any lab that demands cash payments.

Practicing physicians acknowledge the diagnostic and therapeutic challenges posed by Lyme.

The tragedy of incorrect diagnosis is measured both by disability from untreated illness and injury from over-treatment with unnecessary
antibiotics, not to mention delay in proper diagnosis.


Until recently, no tests could show if a patient had living Lyme spirochetes .


Our paper, sent last month to the New England Journal of Medicine on use of C4a, may be a breakthrough.


Consideration of "Lyme literacy" begins with rock-solid facts, not unfounded assumptions from either Lyme-naysayers or Lyme-advocates.

Many other illnesses look like Lyme, but are not.

Without a careful differential diagnosis of patients with complex, multisystem, multisymptom illness, we routinely see nonsense diagnoses like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and Lyme too, when the illness can be shown to be something else.


Mold exposure leads the list of confounding diagnoses, as demonstrated by our three recent peer-reviewed publications .


Some practitioners assume all patients with chronic multisystem illness have Lyme.

They often prescribe intravenous antibiotics that they themselves dispense, collecting fees often exceeding $15,000 a month. Tests used to
confirm such "expensive Lyme" must be impeccable.

Clinical diagnosis of "expensive Lyme" must be impeccable.


I was a member of ILADS, the society of "Lyme literates" for three years, lecturing at meetings of both ILADS and the Lyme Disease Association in Easton from 2000 to 2002. In 2003, I quit both groups .


Throwing stones at physicians is a losing approach to thinking. Look at the Mid-Shore Lyme Disease Association in Easton; they sponsored a national meeting with top-drawer Lyme physicians in March 2006.

Having Lyme disease can be a terrible problem; let fact -- not emotion -- sway the approach to the patient.

Dr. Ritchie C. Shoemaker
Pocomoke City

Shoemaker is director of the Center for Research on Biotoxin Associated Illnesses in Pocomoke City. -- Editor

---

I just started reading Dr. S's MOLD WARRIORS book, 2005, last night after reading about it here on the board for at least 1 yr. It was loaned to our city library from Santa Barbara, Calif. Thru our sources available, only 15 public libraries have Ritchie's book.

He found he had huge MOLD ALLERGIES as well so became an expert in this field many years ago.
Bettyg

IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Our data on 1,500 patients show the vast majority of post-Lyme patients have an nflammatory illness that requires specific interventions following antibiotics -- not antibiotics forever.

---

Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged |