In: Nursing
You are meeting with your healthcare team to round in the ICU and the discussion is started regarding utilization of medications to treat COVID-19 patients. The attending physician asks if you could review the literature regarding azithromycin and chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine as these have been studied in the literature. Please provide a review regarding the safety and efficacy of these agents in the treatment of COVID-19.
Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin are generally well tolerated,but clinicians and patients should be aware of serious adverse events that occur,even during short courses if treatment,potential risk of treatment include prolongation of the QTc interval, hypoglycemia,neuropsychiatric effects,drug-drug interactions and idiosyncratic hypersensitivity reactions.
As we await stronger evidence on the role ,if any,of these drugs in the treatment or prevention of corona virus disease uncommon but serious harms of treatment can be mitigated by careful patient selection and monitoring, hydroxychloroquine is safe for treating malaria,and conditions like lupus or arthritis,but so far no clinical trials have recommended it for use against covid-19
The WHO announcement came after some research suggested hydroxychloroquine might increase the risk of patients dying from covid 19.
Hydroxychloroquine treatment is significantly associated with viral load reduction in covid 19 patients and its effect reinforced by Azithromycin.
Researchers suggest these treatment regimens should not to be used to treat covid 19 outside of clinical trials until results from randomised clinical trials are available to confirm the safety and efficacy of these medications for covid-19 patients.therefore observational study adds hydroxychloroquine alone or with Azithromycin is not usefully and may be harmful in hospitalized covid 19 patients.