5 ms·

> It's been difficult finding an allergist in Germany that's willing to accept this and move forward What are they saying? They don't believe in oral immunothe

• n_plus_1_acc 2y ago
  Even if they believe it, there's a list of treatments and procedures for each diagnosis that insurances are required to cover and oral immunatherapy might not be on said list.
  • mastazi 2y ago
    Is health insurance a common thing in Germany? Don't they have universal health care?
    • pantalaimon 2y ago
      Universal Health care is via public health insurance. You can pick from several public providers, but the price is basically fixed and deducted directly from your salary/payed by the state if you’re unemployed. There is a 2nd system of private insurance providers. Those tend to get you preferential treatment at doctors because they pay them more than the public insurance which has fixed rates, but they will hike prices as you get older and you can’t go back to the public System.
      • mastazi 2y ago
        Interesting, thanks for explaining
• onli 2y ago
  They tend to be critical against immunotherapy in general, if it's not for those allergies where the therapy has a good chance of working and is without risk. Otherwise avoidance of the allergen is preached. We encountered that with a cat hair allergy, treatment was refused.
  • ekianjo 2y ago
    > avoidance of the allergen whats the point of the allergist then?
    • onli 2y ago
      My question exactly. To be fair, for hay fever the therapy was offered. And reading it up back then, the treatments against animal hair are often not successful, and they have a certain risk. Plus no standardized medication, so there are problems with keeping the exact dosage needed. All that combined made me conclude that not wanting to lead such a treatment is not a completely unreasonable position for a doctor. One would have to find a doctor specialized enough to do it anyway.
      • namibj 2y ago
        For cats, just feed them egg from chickens that live with cats, as the egg has antibodies against the allergen in cat saliva, and the egg will cause those to get neutralized before the cat spreads them to its fur. There are commercial products for this that have such egg powder.
        • onli 2y ago
          It seems that is basically the same mechanism as the Purina Live Clear cat food? That one we tried, and did not notice a definitive effect. What did help was keeping the cats out of the bedroom, and later being pregnant removed the allergy so far almost completely for her ;)
    • jack_riminton 2y ago
      The purpose of a system is what it does. If they make money by identifying allergies and then treating those people for those allergies, as opposed to parents giving their children 2 peanuts a week, then their livelihood is under threat. If kids were left to get dirty and put the occasional thing in their mouth, which kids have been doing since the dawn of time, then there wouldn’t be such an allergy problem