How to Handle Flares
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario on November 15, 2021
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEFFREY ENGLISH, MD: The most important thing with MS flare-ups is to understand if it's truly MS flare-up or if it's just worsening of an old symptom. And parts of that is that any MS symptom can get worse with other problems, most commonly an infection.
So we see that a lot. Somebody has the flu or a urinary tract infection, and they're worried that their MS symptoms feel worse. Is this an inflammatory relapse? And we need to treat the source, right? If somebody has another source causing what feels like a relapse, that's real important. So we educate them.
The general concept is anyone who has a new or worsening problem that progresses over 24 hours, it usually can last days to weeks and isn't caused by something else, fever, lack of sleep, dehydration, then we will go ahead and treat that as a flare-up.
Really, for MS flare-ups, a true inflammatory relapse, they do require intravenous steroids, much more tolerable than oral steroids. Obviously, the pseudo flare-ups that are not true relapses that are due to sleep, and dehydration, and things like that, then we kind of coach them through that, and that is something, obviously, you're handling at home.
JEFFREY ENGLISH, MD: The most important thing with MS flare-ups is to understand if it's truly MS flare-up or if it's just worsening of an old symptom. And parts of that is that any MS symptom can get worse with other problems, most commonly an infection.
So we see that a lot. Somebody has the flu or a urinary tract infection, and they're worried that their MS symptoms feel worse. Is this an inflammatory relapse? And we need to treat the source, right? If somebody has another source causing what feels like a relapse, that's real important. So we educate them.
The general concept is anyone who has a new or worsening problem that progresses over 24 hours, it usually can last days to weeks and isn't caused by something else, fever, lack of sleep, dehydration, then we will go ahead and treat that as a flare-up.
Really, for MS flare-ups, a true inflammatory relapse, they do require intravenous steroids, much more tolerable than oral steroids. Obviously, the pseudo flare-ups that are not true relapses that are due to sleep, and dehydration, and things like that, then we kind of coach them through that, and that is something, obviously, you're handling at home.
