@gorillapaws Yeah, convalescent plasma is a treatment that has been around for a hundred years. The idea is you take plasma from patients who recovered from C-19 and then inject them into another patient, and the antibodies attack the virus.
A lot of places have participated in the Mayo clinic trial, including us, but the preliminary data is really not good data. There is absolutely nothing political about the convalescent plasma decision and FDA and the NIH are right not to approve it as an accepted treatment for C-19 as the data on it are unclear. This does not mean that a patient can not get it. It just means that in order for a patient to get it we have to fill out paperwork.
So yes, we have used it several times. Have we seen benefit? I have absolutely no idea as we do this on top of a crapton of other stuff that we do. It’s like throwing in the kitchen sink.
The thing is that NO therapy is really any good. Remdesivir is meh, dexamethasone is meh, and nobody knows if plasma works because there hasn’t been a placebo controlled trial.
What we know does work is active management of critical illness and prevention of injury. We are seeing prolongation of critical illness like we’ve never seen before and Covid-19 is breaking all the rules. I just came off a week in the ICU and we have one patient who has been intubated literally for a month. Stunningly, today she started turning a corner and I was able to get her oxygenation down to the lowest it’s ever been. Was it the remdesivir, the dexamethasone, or the plasma (for which she got two doses)? Doubtful, as those were well over 2 weeks ago. But who knows? It’s probably just time and good critical care. And tomorrow she may be worse again.