Why do specialists feel indignant about official recommendations?

Health professionals stand up against the High Authority for Health (HAS). Many experts have announced that they are against the recommendations published by the HAS on its site last June 20 on Lyme disease. In order to establish a good practice of care, she proposed to take stock of "the current scientific knowledge concerning Lyme borreliosis and other diseases transmitted by tick bites, the diagnostic strategy to be proposed at national level; to ensure optimal overall therapeutic management of patients, to respond to their suffering and to avoid diagnostic and therapeutic wandering and its potential drifts. "

While medicine has been failing for several years to decide on exact symptoms of Lyme disease, the HAS has attempted a consensus by proposing a new clbadification of affliction. In her recommendations, she therefore decides to recognize that people suffering recurrent pain and fatigue are very ill but refuses to approve the existence of a chronic form of Lyme disease. Instead, she created the terminology of SPPT (symptomatology / persistent polymorphic syndrome after a possible tick bite) to explain the "situation of patients who may have been exposed to ticks and who have polymorphic clinical signs. Persistent and unexplained, which may be disabling. "

" Through symptomatology / persistent syndrome (e) polymorphic after tick bite (SPPT), the vagueness of the name already translates the difficulties of definition, the HAS opens the door to a recognition of cases for which no other etiology could be confirmed, "comments the International Journal of Medicine to explain the concern of health professionals.

A" set of ill-defined symptoms "[19659005] Many of them fear that these recommendations may encourage certain abuses, such as the prescription of long-term antibiotic treatments, whose effectiveness has never been greater. emulated and that can be harmful. "The diagnostic procedure was not explicit enough and the text suffered from a lack of clarity overall, opening the door to medical drifts that could be deleterious for patients … This ill defined set of symptoms does not exist in the international medical literature and could lead to excessive diagnoses that may lead patients to inadequate care ", the Society for Infectious Diseases (SPLIF) instigated in a statement.

And to conclude "This is why the SPILF asked the partner companies involved in the management of these diseases, to perform a collegial review of the recommendations of the HAS and if necessary make constructive proposals."

Disregarding "official recommendations"

For the Academy of Medicine, with its recommendations, the HAS " implicitly recognizes the existence of such a pathology without any evidence with, as a result, proposals for heavy management involving numerous, expensive and often unnecessary investigations ". Thus, " far from clarifying the situation" the HAS, in " wanting to satisfy everyone, does not satisfy anyone" .

The National College of General Practitioners goes further by advising " to all doctors" not to consider " official recommendations" of the HAS. "Indeed, in the current state of science, it is not based on any valid scientific data," notes the College, fearing a psychosis around Lyme disease.

The latter, scientifically called Lyme borreliosis, is an infectious vector disease, transmitted by the bite of a spike. The infection may appear in the month following the sting, first in the form of a red and round plate that extends in a circle from the stung area. The lesion of the skin can be accompanied by muscular and articular pains, or fever. Treated quickly, the disease can disappear in a few weeks or months. Otherwise, it can lead to neurological disorders and / or facial paralysis.