While there are bedrock principles in medicine, our understanding of health and disease is always evolving. Doctors build upon their medical school training with continuing education and many keep up with the latest research to provide the best possible care plans for patients.
Diagnostic and treatment guidelines are important resources because they offer comprehensive, research-based best practices for diagnosing and treating patients. CSL recently moderated a podcast about the most recent guideline for CIDP from the European Academy of Neurology/Peripheral Nerve Society (EAN/PNS) with Dr. Urvi Desai, Professor of Neurology, Wake Forest School of Medicine and Atrium Health Neurosciences Institute at Wake Forest Baptist in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The podcast, shared in the journal Neurology and Therapy, was moderated by Bill Maltas, CSL Behring’s Senior Medical Science Liaison, Immunology. CSL Behring, a business unit of CSL, makes medicines for people with serious and rare conditions, including CIDP.
Desai explained that CIDP can be difficult to diagnose and that doctors use clinical signs, such as weakness in arms and legs, along with electrodiagnostic criteria to determine if a person has the condition. The new guideline simplifies that criteria so doctors can diagnose patients as having typical CIDP or CIDP variant, she said.
Once a patient has been diagnosed with CIDP it’s critical to involve the patient in decision-making about the complex condition, which can include relapses, Desai said.
“The availability of the new guideline helps achieve optimal outcomes for the treatment of patients with CIDP. Treatment and monitoring should be a multidisciplinary approach and it is important to involve the patient in the decision-making throughout the course of the disease,” she said.
