BENGALURU: HCG Hospital the first healthcare facility in the state to provide convalescent plasma therapy for Covid patients last year — has recommenced the treatment as there has been a spike in cases over the last few days.
Last year, when cases were increasing, HCG stared plasma therapy under the guidance of Dr Vishal Rao. It gradually petered out as cases reduced in December and requests for plasma donations stopped coming from January this year. But with the second wave on in the state, the hospital has started receiving 4-5 requests per day and it has decided to restart the treatment.
Dr Rao, chief of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology and Robotic Surgery at HCG Cancer Centre, who headed the plasma therapy clinical trials in the state, said that during the peak of the first wave around September, there were 800 ICU cases per day. But now, it is only around 130.
“During the second wave, the burden will be more on ICUs because of virus mutations. Plasma therapy will come into use again, as mass Covid vaccinations could take about two years, going by the current pace,” he told TNIE. He said around 1,200 people were administered plasma in the state, of which, nearly 60 per cent of critical and severely-ill patients recovered.
“The remaining did not make it. One of the reasons was that the plasma would be administered late. For example, a person gets a fever, turns breathless a week later, is put on a ventilator the week after that. Other methods are tried, and only when they do not work, plasma is used. In this case, the plasma will not work as the cytokine storm has already caused the damage which is irreversible,” Dr Rao explained.
There were two important learnings from plasma therapy last year. One, to check if the donor has high antibodies before donating plasma, and the other, giving plasma early when the patient is breathless and not wait till the situation deteriorates. Plasma therapy should be given when the patients are moderate-to-severely ill, and not when they are critical.
On ICMR’s phase-3 plasma trials data, which stated that plasma therapy did not help, Dr Rao said the biggest critique of their study was that they did not check antibody levels of the donor and that their donors were all asymptomatic patients. He also said that plasma therapy worked in Karnataka as vitros antibody assay was carried out to check antibody levels, before taking plasma from the donor.