TUCSON, Ariz., Feb. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- While many physicians are declining to treat out-patients with COVID-19, family physician George Smith of Covington, GA, who is a member of the board of directors of AAPS, explains how he is treating his patients, including frail nursing-home residents, in the winter issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. He and his wife also experienced a serious bout of the illness. Only about half a dozen of approximately 100 patients had to be hospitalized. None were intubated, and none died.
Dr. Smith learned of the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in nursing-home patients from a physician in Texas. For more than 38 years he had prescribed HCQ for patients traveling to malarious regions, without difficulty. Local physicians, a cardiologist and an ophthalmologist, told him they had seen no adverse effects from HCQ in their long careers. Therefore, he began using HCQ prophylactically in his nursing-home patients, together with vitamin D3, zinc, and vitamin C.
Soon, however, Dr. Smith encountered difficulty with pharmacies refusing to fill HCQ prescriptions, citing threats from the state pharmacy board. A nursing-home director refused to allow patients in his facility to receive this treatment—despite dozens of deaths in patients who were denied this option.
Dr. Smith and his wife took the HCQ regimen with azithromycin when they were ill.
Doctors’ first-hand experience may be called “anecdotal,” but Dr. Smith points out that “anecdotal” refers to events that have only been “observed to have occurred.” One example is Sir Isaac Newton’s observation of an apple dropping to the ground and his surmise that something must have caused it to fall.
Dr. Smith advises people to call or write officials and “ask them to allow physicians to write the medicines they believe are in the best interest of their patients and allow our pharmacists to fill those prescriptions without legal threat of losing our licenses.”
He had never before experienced pharmacists demanding a diagnosis code and refusing to fill a prescription that was not for one of a select few conditions.
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.