Yet we are not helping them if they cannot make important decisions or create the safety net they need to avoid unnecessary crises. However, the emergence of effective therapies has changed the way patients, caregivers, and the whole health care team tend to react. Since the beginning of the clinical trials on secondary progressive MS, all of us, including researchers, clinicians, patients, and families, have been paying a lot more attention to the disease course. Medications have made a lot of difference. Nevertheless, even potential treatment choices such as mitoxantrone can be daunting.
Patients know just enough about it to make it frightening.
Providers must be aware that this is a time in which patients will seek even more aggressive experimental treatments. We need to give them sufficient time and education, and the necessary referrals. Fortunately, the transition to secondary progressive MS is also a time when persons who were previously unwilling to make use of available resources now seek the benefits of counseling and education. We need to be ready to provide this. Through our collaborative efforts, we can help patients make this transition more comfortably.