(7 Oct 2020) Two Houston doctors who have overseen the treatment of hundreds of patients infected with COVID-19 say President Donald Trump should have been in the hospital for a minimum of four to five days.
Dr. Joseph Varon says sometimes highly trained physicians become subject to what he calls, “VIP syndrome.”
Varon, the chief medical officer at University Memorial Medical Center, says that’s when a powerful person seems to sway a physician into telling them things, they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.
“Sometimes we don’t think right as clinicians,” Dr. Varon said. “I am very serious. It’s difficult.”
Dr. Varon says it was unusual to release a patient like Trump so early, especially when his oxygen levels reportedly fluctuated.
Dr. Faisal Masud, the director of critical care at Houston Methodist Hospital, has cared for public figures like Barbara Bush.
He said the way to communicate to powerful people is to tell the unvarnished medical truths to their family members.
Dr. Masud added that with the experimental drugs Trump was administered in addition to steroidal anti-inflammatories, that he would keep a patient of the president’s age and physiology in the hospital for about a week depending on how they responded.
The special treatment President Trump received to access an experimental COVID-19 drug raises fairness issues that start with the flawed health care system many Americans experience and end with the public’s right to know more about his condition, ethics and medical experts say.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. revealed on Tuesday how rare it was for anyone to get the drug it gave Trump outside of studies, testing its safety and effectiveness.
The drug, which supplies antibodies to help the immune system clear the coronavirus, is widely viewed as very promising.
Trump also received the antiviral remdesivir and the steroid dexamethasone, and it’s impossible to know whether any of these drugs did him any good.
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