Tackling Misconceptions About APAS Treatment

We feel compelled to clarify some dangerous misconceptions your readers may have after reading “Skeptical of Men in White After a Stint as a Guinea Pig,” by Virginia Gilbert (Oct. 23).

Antiphospholipid antibody syndrome is an extremely serious disorder in pregnancy that can lead to multiple problems, including recurrent pregnancy loss, fetal intrauterine growth retardation, and maternal pulmonary embolism, stroke or death. Professional journals began alerting physicians to the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment in the early 1980s.

By 1996, when Gilbert was pregnant, the treatment protocol for APAS was well established and she was certainly no guinea pig. She was, however, very lucky her obstetrician made the diagnosis, lucky she was referred to appropriate consultants, and lucky those consultants placed her on an appropriate treatment regimen and monitored her closely. Most of all she is lucky she had a healthy baby and that she personally did not suffer any neurological compromise, that she is physical and mentally able to write a letter to the Los Angeles Times.

We are not sure what is more regrettable: that Gilbert does not appreciate what she accomplished with good medical supervision or that the Los Angeles Times would print such a potentially dangerous point of view without accompanying medical commentary.

--Dr. KHALIL TABSH

and NANCY THEROUX

UCLA Medical Center