Status: 17.10.2022 12:14
Long-Covid patients often drift from doctor to doctor because they can’t find a cure. One ARDEckart von Hirschhausen’s documentary now presents blood washing as a promising therapy, but critics believe there is no evidence for it. They warn against profit.
Tobias Welte has long been running a Covid clinic at the Hannover Medical School (MHH). Since opening in April 2020, he and his colleagues have treated several thousand patients. All had persistent symptoms after the corona infection subsided, often muscle weakness, insomnia, lack of concentration.
Basically, it’s not unusual for you to still have symptoms for several weeks after a virus infection, Welte says. Don’t expect a complete and immediate cure. Fortunately, in two-thirds of long-term Covid patients, symptoms go away within three months. However, there are also severe cases where the suffering lasts much longer and doctors are often perplexed.
The documentary Corona by Eckart von Hirschhausen entitled “The pandemic of the untreated” is about these people. Of people who are exchanged by the doctor and the doctor and who are not really helped anywhere. According to Hirschhausen, he made the documentary “for her”, which can be seen tonight at 20:15 the first.
Medical associations warn against HELP apheresis
In the film, the well-known television doctor presents blood washing (HELP apheresis) as a possible therapy that can promise a cure. In desperation, several patients in Hirschhausen’s film did this therapy, successfully. But there is no serious evidence of HELP apheresis efficacy against Long Covid – and renowned medical associations even explicitly warn it.
“The film really hurts my stomach,” says Carmen Scheibenbogen, director of the immune deficiency clinic at the Charité in Berlin. In the film, she is interviewed as a scientist researching chronic fatigue syndrome (ME / CFS). She says, “I am concerned that the film will lead many patients in their desperation to take money into their own hands and perform HELP apheresis. A market has developed there.”
The blood is filtered
Dr. Beate Jaeger in Mülheim an der Ruhr does a lot of HELP apheresis in patients with long-term Covid. Hirschhausen pays her several visits and several of the film’s protagonists have been treated in this practice. Jaeger treats Covid patients along with HELP apheresis, according to her own website.
In this form of blood washing, fats and other substances such as clotting and inflammatory factors are filtered out of the blood. Patients lie down on a sofa, just like when they donate blood. The blood exits the vein in the arm through a catheter, flows through a machine and then, clean, flows back into the body through the other arm.
In the film, the doctor describes almost biblical healings: “I had young nurses who could hardly crawl from bed to kitchen. After two apheresis sessions, they were suddenly able to run a marathon again.” Inquiries from “Süddeutsche Zeitung” e Ed about their cases, Jaeger did not respond.
“It’s not plausible”
MHH Professor Welte considers HELP apheresis in long-time Covid patients to be nonsense. “Why would you want to lower blood lipids? It’s not plausible.” With Long Covid, there are extreme placebo effects, Welte says. “If someone pays a lot of money for such a blood wash, then it often helps with healing.”
Scientific societies even warn against this therapy. The German Society of Nephrology, which sets guidelines for the treatment of apheresis in Germany, came to the conclusion in its August statement: “Without sound scientific data, no recommendations can be made for the implementation of these therapeutic methods. , also because their improper use can lead to serious complications “.
Hirschhausen, in turn, refers in his answer Ed and SZ to another sentence of the statement, in which the authors “welcome” if data is systematically collected from apheresis patients and entered into a registry. The guideline for physicians on the treatment of long and post-Covid cases states: “While there may be positive clinical cases and small series of cases, general use is currently strongly discouraged.”
Up to 3000 euros for one session
In their distress, patients often cling to such individual case reports. Apheresis expert Jan T. Kielstein, chief of internal medicine and blood purification procedures at the city clinic in Braunschweig, is observing a growing market for blood purification for long-term Covid patients. Those affected are expected to pay up to € 3,000 for a session, says Kielstein, who is also a board member of the European Group of the International Society for Apheresis. “I know patients who have already spent tens of thousands of euros on unnecessary long-term Covid treatments,” says Kielstein.
Hirschhausen himself says when asked to repeatedly point out the lack of studies in the film: “The purpose of the film was and is to show how miserable the diagnostic criteria, care and level of knowledge are.”
In the film, however, there is almost no doubt. Hirschhausen states that “for many doctors the situation in the practice is still too thin”. But at the same time he calls Jaeger a “prophet”.
“Cinema never recommends therapy”
Apheresis expert Kielstein finds it “misleading” that the film only mentions the success of the treatment. Unlike the film, longtime Covid patients who don’t feel better after HELP apheresis continue to come to his clinic. But Hirschhausen not only does not talk about the side effects and failures of apheresis. He even washes his blood. According to his own statement, he has no Long Covid at all.
of the WDR, who is in charge of the documentary, notes on request that Hirschhausen himself states in the film that he is skeptical that apheresis will do him good. In general, he introduces himself WDR to the point of view: “The film never recommends therapy”.
Thousands of patients on the waiting list
According to Beate Jaeger, she has already treated more than a thousand patients with HELP apheresis in her practice in Mülheim, according to Hirschhausen, 8,000 patients are on the waiting list. “There are rules in medicine that you shouldn’t treat such a large number of cases before you’ve created evidence,” says Michael Hallek, Director of the Clinic of Internal Medicine I at the University Hospital of Cologne and head of the Long Covid working committee group. scientific advisory board of the German Medical Association.
On his website, Jaeger promises that “the results of the therapy, which have been good so far, will soon be available as a study.” However, he does not provide any details on the study.
Tobias Welte of Hanover Medical School is skeptical: as long as there are no studies showing it is useless, patients can always be sold a blood wash.
In his response to NDR and SZ, Hirschhausen states that his film is “a necessary and impressive call for further evidence in the treatment”.
