The team of medical professionals treating US President Donald Trump for COVID-19 is providing him with “the full standard of care and beyond,” Trump’s personal physician Sean Conley said Saturday.
The medical team in charge of Trump’s care has prescribed the president a cocktail of experimental antibodies, an antiviral drug and a steroid that is typically only given to patients with severe COVID-19 cases. The comprehensive nature of Trump’s treatments and conflicting reports on his health have led medical experts to raise concerns about a new risk: ‘VIP syndrome’.
The ‘VIP syndrome’, coined in 1964 by Walter Weintraub, a physician at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, describes a phenomenon in which the medical treatment of a famous, powerful, or influential patient (a very important person or VIP) faces challenges caused by the person’s fame, power, or influence.
Doctors may make decisions that they would not normally make because they are more willing to comply with the famous person’s demands or are more concerned than usual that the VIP avoids pain or recovers quickly.
“[VIP syndrome] often puts pressure on the healthcare team to bend the rules by which they generally practice medicine,” according to a 2011 article in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.
Complications can arise when physicians embark on medical treatments that deviate from the standard course of care and that can be detrimental to the patient’s health.
To be clear, there is no firm evidence that VIP syndrome is a factor in the president’s care, but experts have offered it as a possible explanation for the mixed messages from Trump’s medical team.
Thomas McGinn, chief physician at Northwell Health in New York, told the New York Times that Trump’s array of prescription drugs “begs the question: is he sicker than we hear, or are they being too aggressive because he’s the president?
Trump announced his diagnosis early Friday. By the end of the day, he had been airlifted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and received an unauthorized experimental antibody treatment developed by the American biotechnology firm Regeneron that was administered to patients ten times or less.
Conley, Trump’s physician, said at Saturday’s press conference that Trump had started advanced therapy “a little earlier than most of the patients we know and follow.”
In addition to antibody treatment, Trump is taking Remdesivir, an antiviral drug licensed for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Trump’s doctors also gave him dexamethasone, a steroid generally only given to people. . . . with severe cases of COVID-19.
Conley also said Saturday that Trump was “active and active” and that his cholesterol and blood pressure levels were “excellent.” In response, a reporter asked why the medical team had decided to transfer Trump to Walter Reed.
