Intravenous Steroids Safe, Effective To Administer At Home For MS Relapse Treatment
Treating multiple sclerosis relapses with intravenous steroids at home versus in an outpatient center appears to be safe and effective from both patient and economic perspectives, a study published in the July edition of the Lancet Neurology suggests.
To compare the safety and effectiveness of administering I.V. steroids at home or at an outpatient center, researchers followed 138 patients with MS. All participants had clinically significant relapses and were administered a three-day regimen of I.V. methylprednisolone. Half of the subjects received the treatment at home and the remaining subjects were treated at a clinic on an outpatient basis.
According to the results, coordination of care was significantly better in the home-treatment group than in the outpatient-treatment group. However, other factors such as access to care, information and interpersonal care did not differ between the groups.
The administration of the treatment was equally safe and effective in both locations. The cost was either the same or cheaper when delivered at home than at the outpatient center.
"[T]he trial indicates the importance of explicit and valid outcome measures of all aspects of service delivery when making decisions about health policy," the researchers wrote. "This finding has implications for complex service delivery care models for long-term diseases."
A complimentary medical news service provided by Teva Neuroscience, this news service has been developed independently and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Teva Neuroscience. MS Update is a current news service provided by VerusMed, An Evolution of Faxwatch. The staff of medical writers at VerusMed independently summarize and abstract the most current articles on subjects in multiple sclerosis from the major peer-reviewed medical publications, such as Annals of Neurology, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of Neurology. In all cases, VerusMed cites the original source of its material.