BJGP Editorial: Long COVID in children and young people: uncertainty and contradictions by Chew-Graham et al

Quote:

The varied presentation of long COVID, particularly the neuropsychiatric complications, can cause uncertainty for GPs, making the diagnosis difficult. Whatever this uncertainty for clinicians, however, primary care must play a key role in supporting young people with long COVID and their families,19 liaising with schools where necessary. Importantly, children and young people need to be believed by their GP. At the time of writing, access to specialist long COVID clinics for children and young people is limited,20 with only 15 hubs across England, so GPs have the primary responsibility of managing children with long COVID.

Jasmin has a final plea for GPs: ‘I would want GPs to listen to us and understand how serious the symptoms are, even if we look ok on the outside.’

As with other unexplained symptoms, the invisibility of the illness must not be a barrier to offering adequate support, care, and management.

https://bjgp.org/content/72/719/253

(Edited to swap quote)

 

One of the authors is Binita Kane, lung doctor and member of Independent Sage. If I remember correct, she mentioned on one of the Independent Sage briefings that she has a child suffering from Long Covid, and she seems sympathetic to both Long Covid and ME/CFS.

 

Here she is on Twitter promoting this editorial

She has posted in support of pwME on Twitter before; here she is posting, positively, about the APPG for ME report

which meant that I was surprised to see her publishing something alongside Chew-Graham. Perhaps the "uncertainty and contradictions" in title describes Chew-Graham's mindset...

 

I think it is a continuation of her only real interest - marketing the need for GP superheroes.
She might do better working for RNLI.

 

Seriously, this is a very sad look into the dysfunction of medicine. No other profession has to cajole their workers to do the basics of their job. I cringe at lines like this every time, same as whenever I see a doctor say "uh, turns out we don't know everything". Absolute cringe.

But it's seriously creepy to have someone who has spent much of her career working to de-medicalize a disease co-author a paper that criticizes the very thing she has worked on before. What nonsense. Because this directly and explicitly criticizes many of the efforts Chew-Graham took part in along with other ideologues. So much clean-up is needed at the most fundamental levels, a system that cannot even see its own mistakes cannot possibly learn from them. And it shows.

 

The Conversation January 2023

Supporting a child with long COVID – tips from parents of children living with the condition
Carolyn Chew-Graham, Binita Kane, Tracy Briggs


"Long COVID is the patient-preferred term used to describe symptoms lasting more than four weeks after a COVID-19 infection. Children and young people can also suffer from long COVID following even a mild infection with the virus. The latest figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics show an estimated 69,000 children are living with long COVID, 41,000 of whom have had symptoms for at least a year.

The most common symptoms of long COVID in children are fatigue and headaches, but young people can also have a range of other symptoms including chest pain, persistent cough, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, anxiety and low mood.

We don’t know whether all children with long COVID will recover or how long this will take. Parents’ narratives suggest that symptoms may fluctuate over time, and that it’s not uncommon to have a period of apparent recovery and then relapse some months later. The course of the illness is not linear.

While every child will have specific problems and individual needs, there are some suggestions we can make to help parents or guardians support their child or young person with long COVID. Two of us (Binita and Tracy) have children with long COVID, and the following tips are based on our own experiences."