Treatment
There is no known cure for CVS, but there are medications that can be used to treat, intervene in, and prevent attacks. There is a growing body of publications on either individual cases or experiences of cohorts of CVS patients. Treatment is usually on an individual basis, based on trial and error.
The most common therapeutic strategies for those already in an attack are maintenance of salt balance by appropriate intravenous fluids and, in some cases, sedation. Having vomited for a long period prior to attending a hospital, patients are typically severely dehydrated. Abortive therapy has limited success, but for a number of patients potent anti-emetic drugs such as ondansetron (Zofran) or granisetron (Kytril), dronabinol (Marinol), and more recently dextromethorphan may be helpful in either preventing an attack, aborting an attack or reducing the severity of an attack. In some instances, sedatives or painkillers (particularly morphine based) can be helpful. Lifestyle changes may also be recommended, such as extended rest and/or reduction of stress. Because the symptoms of CVS are similar (or perhaps identical) to those of the disease well-identified as "abdominal migraine,"
Read more about this topic: Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white mans treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.”
—Raymond Chandler (18881959)
“Ambivalence reaches the level of schizophrenia in our treatment of violence among the young. Parents do not encourage violence, but neither do they take up arms against the industries which encourage it. Parents hide their eyes from the books and comics, slasher films, videos and lyrics which form the texture of an adolescent culture. While all successful societies have inhibited instinct, ours encourages it. Or at least we profess ourselves powerless to interfere with it.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)