Identifying and managing clients with suspected Lyme disease

speaker: Dr nina bailey

date: July 31, 2019

While Lyme disease is considered to be relatively uncommon in the UK, it is likely that many cases are simply undiagnosed, many of which turn up in our clinics frustrated by conventional approaches to managing their symptoms. Being able to identify clients with suspected Lyme disease is vital, as many cases that present with early or initial symptoms of fever, headache or other neurological symptoms as a consequence of a tick-borne bacterial infection, simply do not relate these symptoms to having been bitten. As such, this highlights the importance of the need to take comprehensive and detailed client history notes, certainly when a client is reporting symptoms that have not responded to conventional interventions.

With appropriate antibiotic treatment, most patients with early-stage Lyme disease recover rapidly and completely. Signs and symptoms of Lyme disease, however, vary by disease stage, and because many individuals who present with symptoms fail to recall a history of a tick bite or to report the classic bulls-eye rash, they often miss out on what is a relatively narrow window of opportunity to prevent the condition from progressing.

As Lyme disease is a multi-system illness, if left untreated, it can progress to affect the skin, joints, immune system, nervous system, or other vital organs, with many of the symptoms becoming indistinguishable from other multi-system conditions such as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome.

In this hour-long webinar, Dr Nina Bailey discusses strategies for practitioners to help identify and manage symptoms of Lyme disease.