All Your Plasma Therapy Questions, Answered

Three things you should know about convalescent plasma therap

- Dr. Eduardo Gonzales

Lately, I have heard anecdotes about some colleagues in our premier hospitals administering blood plasma from Covid19 survivors as a treatment form for seriously ill Covid-19 patients. Evidently, patients have been exhibiting marked improvement clinically and in their X-rays after undergoing the procedure. This form of treatment in the management of infectious diseases is called convalescent plasma therapy (CPT). It is not a new procedure—it has been employed since the early part of the 20th century. More recently, it has been used successfully in the treatment of, among others, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which incidentally, are also caused by coronaviruses. But CPT is not a standard procedure in the management of Covid-19 patients because mainstream medicine is “evidence-based” and there is no proof that points to the effectiveness and safety of CPT in treating Covid-19 patients. But these are desperate times, which require desperate measures, so I suppose, it is all right to relegate evidence-based medicine to the background. In fact, even the World Health Organization gave tacit approval for the use of the procedure when their technical guidance issued on March 20 mentioned that “experience suggests that empirical use of convalescent plasma may be a potentially useful treatment for Covid-19.” Here are three things you should know about the therapy.