Treatment for Guillain-Barre Syndrome
There is no cure for Guillain-Barre syndrome. However, there are many treatments available to reduce symptoms, treat complications and speed recovery.
When symptoms are severe, the patient will need to go to hospital for breathing help, treatment and physiotherapy.
A method called plasmapheresis is used to remove proteins called antibodies in the blood. The process involves drawing blood from the body, usually the arm, pump it to a machine that removes the antibodies, then send it back to the body.
Therapy with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is another treatment used to reduce the severity and duration of symptoms of Guillain-Barre syndrome. In this case, the immunoglobulins are added to the blood in large amounts, blocking antibodies that cause inflammation.
Other treatments are directed at preventing complications.
* You can use blood thinners to prevent clotting.
* If the diaphragm is weak, you may need breathing support or even a breathing tube and ventilator.
* Pain is treated aggressively with anti-inflammatory drugs and narcotics, if necessary.
* Proper body positioning and the use of a feeding tube can be used to prevent choking during meals, if the muscles for swallowing are weak.
I am interested in the plasmaphereisis picture that you have posted in this blog article about Guillain-Barre Syndrome
I had GBS when I was 17. It went all the way from head to toe..or actually the other way around, toe to head. Recently when I read up on it (about two years ago at 41 years of age) I seen that mononucleosis can be a precursor.
I am fairly convinced that I did have mono prior to the onset of this devastating illness.
I was on a respirator for almost three months ,and for a few weeks couldn’t even shut my eyes. It took probably five years for me to fully recover or rather recover as much as I was going too. Even today 26, years later, I still have numbness and tingling in my outer extremities. Particularly my feet. Which I shattered at the age of 29 in a scaffolding fall. I remember my neurologist telling me about therapy with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG)mentioned above but he never did it. He said it would be too uncomfortable.
Anyway that’s what happened. After, actually before, I had fully recovered I had to go back to construction work and then yet again after completely shattering my left midfoot and right ankle, among other injuries (L1 compression fracture etc.) at 30. Both times I was absolutely miserable, day in day out working at such a physically demanding job to which I was no longer physically suited. I really had no choice though; I had to make a living and eventually, at the time of the fall, had a family.
In 2008 I was able to get on Social Security Disability and am now going to school for Computer Info. Systems. Prior to finally attaining this help I have desperately needed, initially sought but could not find, I became or almost became an alcoholic and found myself with three DUI’s in eight years (one two years after the fall having returned to construction and the last two just a year prior to applying for disability in 2008) which took my license for 10 years. Of course in ultra conservative Hamilton Co. IN, my circumstances and the fact that I am now a 43 yr. old sophomore with a 3.8 GPA and have since had an ankle operation and regularly see a doctor after not being treated for eight years after my being released from workman’s comp. in 2000. Eight years, in which my feet had become riddled with arthritis.
Most significant is that I have not had a drink since Aug. of 2007 (my last DUI) save one relapse of four beers while waiting for approval from SSD and having no income for seven months and going through paternity hearings in which the most evil woman I have ever met tells the court, “He’s been working since this happened 10 years ago. He’s fine.” I of course could not afford an attorney so you may well imagine how that turned out. Particularly since there were abuse allegations. Allegations which eventually, were found to be unsubstantiated. Someone always has it worse but this was my reality and if I had not had to go through it perhaps I wouldn’t have been prepared or rather motivated to attend college and succeed as I am doing now. On the same note I would have a license and already be finished with my retraining had I been given the help I sought at the onset of this ordeal, before arthritis had crippled me to the extent that it did. Perhaps the lack of sensation and hypersensitiveness of my feet from the Guillan Beret was, if not greatly, then partially responsible for my fall. I’m afraid I must shake my head when I hear or read about GBS being a condition from which one recovers from fully. That is what I was told in 1984 during my recovery and though I am seeing in recent articles that it can take five years to fully recover from the more severe cases rather than the one or two I was told , I would disagree with even that. Relative to my total paralysis the recovery is quite miraculous indeed. I know that paralysis remained in my feet. Particularly in my toes which was evident from them now having been hammered. To say that one can return to balancing and walking on 3 1/2” wide walls or any number of fine tuned motor skills and strength endurance required in construction, logging, firefighting and the like is not completely accurate at all. Though it can be done for a time, the longevity of continuing in such a way after GBS is relative to the severity of the case and the time since the illness.