Just want to talk a little bit about personal experience.
I live in one of the epic center areas. I am a proceduralist that works with COVID positive pts as well as pt who are being worked up. Due to nature of my work I am in close contact with them, and we don’t have enough N95 to go around. I’ve treated very sick patients who resemble COVID pts clinically without test confirmation and I was not able to use N95.
So for the first time I pulled the trigger and wrote myself 20 x 200mg HCQ tab. I actually initially wanted CQ because there is more invivo experience and also I didnt want to dip in the supply for RA and SLE pts but evidently they are out.
Just want to reach out to see if anyone in a high risk situation is taking prophylaxis, and if so, what’s your dosing regiment?
I’ve contacted the UM study group and found their dosage to be quite high and approach therapeutic doses.
I also read this thread with a lot of interest. https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/fbfj0r/covid19_prophylaxis_in_healthcare_workers/
Obviously I feel u/aedes approach seems safer due to it being a common regiment and possibly have some effect as well, but I still have some reservations
What if one is already infected? The prophylactic regiment would be quite underdosed compared to theraputic regiment floating around. Can this induce resistance?
Loading dose: I am personally hesistant to load this medicine and rather just use the full malaria regiment and deal with the potential lack of efficiacy in the beginning, thoughts?
Closing thoughts: I feel that there is a lot of outrage now at prescribers who self prescribe HCQ. I can definitely see the challenge this present for patients who are on this medicine or the issue with people hoarding supplies. However, I find it sad that the sentiment is so negative on this aspect. Many of our hospitals have failed us on the PPE front. I personally found myself lacking primary care as my own PCP decided to close their office all together (with no follow up or tele health option). As a matter of fact, this is actually listed as an appropriate situation for physician to self prescribe in my state guideline.
More over, many of us are facing patients everyday on the front line and being exposed to large amount of viral spread. If we are not well ourselves, how can we take care of our patients?
I hope people who have bite the bullet and begin a prophylaxis regiment can share their experience, concerns and regiment here on this thread.
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