Australia: RACGP: GET for CFS

Very PACE trial based information.

eg"
Adverse effects
Surveys by patient groups of their members have suggested that GET may be harmful to some people with CFS. However, this finding is believed to be due to inappropriately planned or progressed exercise programs, possibly undertaken independently or under supervision from a person without appropriate experience.

Availability
GET should be supervised by a physiotherapist or exercise therapist, preferably with specific experience and training in applying GET to patients with CFS.

The PACE trial has produced a comprehensive GET therapist manual (and a manual for patients), which can be downloaded free of charge by going to PACE trial website and selecting the relevant manuals from the trial information section."

https://www.racgp.org.au/clinical-r...ded-exercise-therapy-chronic-fatigue-syndrome

(The RACGP is cited on the Wikipedia page for GET "Some prominent health organisations support the usefulness of GET for chronic fatigue syndrome, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners[2]).")

 

This a section is from an online handbook: https://www.racgp.org.au/clinical-resources/clinical-guidelines/handi

"The Handbook of Non-Drug interventions (HANDI) is making effective non-drug treatments more visible and easier to use.

HANDI aims to make ‘prescribing’ a non-drug therapy almost as easy as writing a prescription.

The topics in HANDI have been developed by the HANDI Project team and is supported by appropriate evidence."

On the left hand column is a link to a Provide Feedback page: https://www.racgp.org.au/clinical-resources/clinical-guidelines/handi/provide-feedback

Might it be worth compiling an S4ME response ?

 

This is a current publication??

 

[my bold/underline]

Not very sound evidence then for ignoring reporting of harms

 

It says First published: March 2015.

 

thanks. yeah, I see that. that explains why it was written this way. it's weird that it's still up, as if time has stood still for six years.

 

The RACGP is still very much in the dark ages when it comes to ME/CFS (much like most Australian medical professionals).

As an example, there's this advice from the RACGP on CBT for ME/CFS which falsely claims that CBT for other serious illnesses like MS and RA is equivalent to the CBT offered for ME/CFS.

Moreover, the RACP's ME/CFS guidelines are from 2002. They won't withdraw them even though the NHMRC has said that they are clearly out of date.

 

Trial By Error: Awaiting Response on Chalder Paper; Australian GPs Still Promoting GET and Citing PACE

"The website of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) hosts a section called “Graded exercise therapy: chronic fatigue syndrome.” The section indicates that it was posted in March, 2015, with no sign that it has been since reviewed or updated. Not surprisingly, the text reads as if PACE hadn’t been publicly and widely discredited; in fact, PACE is a key reference. And the section highlights the 1994 Fukuda case definition, which does not require post-exertional malaise as a symptom.

The section is part of RACGP’s Handbook of Non-Drug Interventions, or HANDI. The chair of the HANDI project is Paul Glasziou, a professor of evidence-based medicine at Australia’s Bond University. Previously, he served as director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University. According to his HANDI bio, “his key interests include identifying and removing the barriers to using high quality research in everyday clinical practice.”"

https://www.virology.ws/2022/01/04/...lian-gps-still-promoting-get-and-citing-pace/

I have also posted this on the thread for the other article mentioned here, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Occupational Status: A Retrospective Longitudinal Study, 2021, Chalder et al