James Bussel, MD, explains why some doctors may be slow to change a patient’s ITP treatment even when it may not be working.
Transcript
We estimate that something like two-thirds of patients, at least in the United States, are seeing doctors who are not very familiar with ITP.
They may, therefore, only be familiar with how to handle a very limited number of treatments. So if a patient is getting one of those treatments and it’s not clear whether it’s working or not, a physician with more experience might be willing and interested in changing. Whereas a physician who doesn’t really have experience with other treatments may be somebody who tends to, you know, stay with what they know.
I guess if a treatment is helping something important to the patient, even if it’s not helping something else important to a patient — like what if it’s making their quality of life much better even though their platelet count isn’t changing very much? — that might be another reason.