Some people have spent tens of thousands of dollars traveling across Europe to get a 'blood washing' procedure that is experimental.
Apheresis is a procedure in which a person's blood is removed and returned to the body.
Apheresis is considered a last resort by the German Society of Nephrology. There have been no clinical trials on people with long COVID.
There are risks associated with apheresis and agents used in the procedure.
An investigation by Madlen Davies at the British Medical Journal found that a patient from the Netherlands spent almost all of her life savings traveling to Cyprus for a 'blood washing' procedure that offered no improvement in her symptoms.
It took the Dutch woman two hours to walk to the kitchen because she was so tired after catching the disease.
Brain fog, heart palpitations, and chest pain were some of the symptoms she experienced. It's normal for a series of medical tests to reveal nothing strange.
A Dutch woman left her job in November of 2021. There was a lot of chatter about a clinic in Germany that was offering apheresis after she joined a Facebook group for people with long COVID.
She traveled to Cyprus to try the procedure.
She rented an apartment on the beach and underwent six rounds of apheresis.
Nothing was done to help. Her savings were taken with nothing to show for it.
Clinics in Germany, Switzerland, and Turkey provide apheresis. Thousands of patients have been treated by the Lipid Center North Rhine in Germany.
Apheresis is said to improve circulation in the smallest of blood vessels and reduce the blood's stickiness.
The benefits of experimental procedures outweigh the risks for some patients, according to those who offer the treatment.
There is no evidence that apheresis helps treat chronic bronchitis.
"As we don't know how they form, we can't say if this treatment will stop them from recurring," Robert Ariens said.
He wondered how we know if microclots are linked to disease. If we don't know the mechanisms by which the microclots form and whether or not they are causative of disease, it seems premature to design a treatment to take the microclots away, as both apheresis and triple anticoagulation are not without risks.
Patients need long-term follow-up if they are receiving care in a country other than the one they normally live in, because anticoagulation can cause headaches, bleeding, and brain hemorrhages.
Long COVID is defined by the WHO as ongoing symptoms that continue for more than three months after COVID-19 that can't be explained by a different diagnosis.
It is not known what caused long COVID. One of the leading theories is that long COVID is caused by tiny blood clot in the lungs and blood vessels that gum up the system and prevent blood flow.
Some people think that long COVID is caused by a malfunctioning immune system or a virus. It could be a combination of all three.
The investigation was published in a medical journal.
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