What s the diference ?
real basically the IVIG is IgG that will help stop the IgG from your immune system from attacking the mylen sheet on your nerves, while still providing immunity.
the plasma exchange basically cleans out the bad IgG in your system and returns "clean plasma" to you. your immune system will still keep putting out problem IgG. from what i have read, there are some more side effects from PE than from IVIG
real basic but hope this helps
Was wondering if that would help my husband, the PE, with having the cancer in the lymph nodes I’m not sure??
Not sure if I sid he has CIDP!
Very different treatments. IVIG is when you are given an IV of other ppls blood, but it is the antibodies of their blood, and it takes approx. the blood from up to 5000 ppl to make enough for one treatment. It takes up to 10 hours to complete, in a hospital or clinic environment, infused, or pushed, slowly into your vein. I had to be hospitalized for my treatments as I had severe side affects. You get one treatment a day for five days initially, and you have the treatment repeated as needed, usually 6 week intervals. I had approx. 11 treatments with the last few being only three in the group, but more pushed each time. This was a very successful treatment option for me. However due to side affects, I will have to do plasmapharesis with chemo at the same time the next time.
My understanding of plasma exchange, plasmapharesis, is they remove your blood, and remove certain antibodies from your blood before they return it to you along with antibodies from other ppls blood. I may not have this completely right, the terminology, etc.
Hope this helps.
I mainly had IVIG. The first time was a loading dose treatment of 5 days. After that it was three days, every three weeks, for about a year. Then I gradually lengthened the interval between treatments, and finally stopped altogether.
The IVIG worked almost like a miracle for me, but I would start to get slightly weaker when the time for my next treatment was approaching.
I had PE one time, when I had a bad relapse while I was out of town on vacation, and had to be hospitalized. The local doctor preferred PE, so that is what he did. There were three treatments, but it took five days because he would only do them every other day, because he considered them too hard on me to do them on successive days. And I had to have a port (probably not the right term) installed in my jugular, to allow the blood to be removed and returned. It was a surgical procedure, and the port was very annoying.
The PE worked well enough to get me back on my feet and able to travel back home. However, it did not seem to me to be as effective as the IVIG. And I started to lose strength almost immediately, so I had to have IVIG again pretty quickly.
So, my general impression (from very limited information) is that the PE was a lot more invasive, and not quite as effective for me. But I understand there are some folks for whom IVIG just does not work. For them, PE might be the best choice.
Bill
Who do you get to do a plasma exchange, your nerologist??
Whoever is treating your CIDP. My neurologist oversees and orders my treatments. I live in the US. I know some patients seem to have more control over how they can order their IvIG and so forth. Not me.
Carol Wright said:
Who do you get to do a plasma exchange, your nerologist??