Neurologist Richard Lewis, MD, describes the symptoms that may signal a potential MG crisis and why patients should contact their care team quickly.
Transcript
What I tell my patients is that if you have any speech or swallowing problems, any weakness holding up your head, any signs of shortness of breath, you need to let me know.
Whether you think they’re serious or not, let me figure that out with you. Because those can be signs of impending crisis, and we don’t want to mess around with it.
And if you’re having trouble getting a hold of me, it’s worth going to the emergency room. As much as everyone hates to go to emergency rooms, and I understand it because we’ve all watched “The Pitt.”
It’s just too risky with myasthenia.
The good thing about myasthenia, which I do talk to my patients about, is that we can get probably over 90% of patients virtually symptom free with the right treatments.
But until we do that, it’s a dangerous disease.
So we need to get to that point, finding the right treatment approach, getting you stable, but we don’t mess around until we do that.
