Indian physicians who are prescribing steroids as soon as patients become COVID+ or just for fever & headache without any fall in saturation, Please STOP.

You are aggravating the problem & creating an unnecessary crisis for patients & healthcare by making them immunocompromised.

Everyday I see prescriptions for 2nd opinions where doctors have started steroids for patient who are - asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic but no oxygen saturation fall or just because D-dimer & CRP are mildly elevated!!!

You will find mild D-dimer or CRP rise in almost every 2nd Covid patient.

You need to correlate the elevated findings with patients clinical symptoms & deterioration if any before you think of starting steroids.

And please DONOT stop steroids abruptly, taper down & stop.

CRP is a marker of inflammation, when body is building up immune response against a novel pathogen of course we will find CRP rising, unless accompanied by symptomatic deterioration it is not a guiding marker to start steroid.

D-dimer has sensitivity in detecting VTE or PE but it is also very non-specific, it came be found raised due to pneumonitis per se & again is not a guiding factor to start steroids.

It can be used as a guiding factor for starting anticoagulation that too Presence of symptoms

And if you are a patient please stop assuming that a doctor who is not prescribing you 5 or 10 medicines including steroids doesn’t know what they are doing.

Steroids are not Candy, they have serious clinical implications & should be used carefully.