I was talking to a very honest, retired GP, a relative of mine, who is getting his affairs in order as she nears the end of her life. This question always comes to mind for her: was she perhaps too biased, did she diagnose Lyme disease too often?
Over the course of her decades-long career, she has treated perhaps a few dozen, or perhaps around a hundred, patients for Lyme disease. In a practice with between 2,000 and 4,000 patients, this is not a particularly large number.
She knew Dr Béla Bózsik, who regularly passed on to her information from Lyme disease specialists and scientific articles regarding the prevalence of the disease, its symptoms, and the transformed lives of patients (negatively debilitating before treatment, and wonderfully improved afterwards). This is why the question sometimes arises in her mind: Was she not a little too ‘biased’ towards Lyme disease? After all, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Right, I admit it, the picture here shows a screw that a user with little technical aptitude is about to hammer into her own knee.
But let’s consider that if we don’t happen to have a screwdriver to hand, we could drive this screw in with a well-aimed blow. If, however, we strike too hard, it will result in permanent damage.
The punchline: the elderly GP, who has brought about recovery in most cases through Lyme treatment, always answers herself as she did to her former colleagues and superiors:
“All right, I may treat a patient whose symptoms aren’t caused by the diagnosed infection, but how do you live with yourselves for not treating a patient who might have improved?”
And back then we could only guess; years later, a Lancet publication estimated a prevalence of around 10% for Lyme disease in Hungary (this is the proportion of those infected, not of patients), and since 2020, publications have confirmed a seroprevalence of 20.7% for Central Europe. The cumulative number of patients is around 10%. (data here).
So it is reasonable to suspect Lyme disease if the symptoms match, even if the lab does not confirm it, in one in five patients!
(C) Lyme Borreliosis Foundation
