Treatment and Prognosis
Treatment involves medications to suppress the immune system, including high-dose prednisone and cyclophosphamide. In single cases methotrexate may be also helpful . Therapy results in remissions or cures in 90% of cases. Untreated, the disease is fatal in most cases. The most serious associated conditions generally involve the kidneys and gastrointestinal tract. A fatal course usually involves gastrointestinal hemorrhage, infection, myocardial infarction and/or renal failure.
In case of remission, approximately 60% experience relapse within five years. In cases caused by hepatitis B virus, however, recurrence rate is only approximately 6%.
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Famous quotes containing the words treatment and and/or treatment:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)