Karolinska in Sweden is currently running an EECP clinical trial for long covid. Mekanisk perifer kompression (EECP)-behandling till patienter med postcovid symtom. https://www.karolinska.se/forskning...r/pagaende-kliniska-studier/eecplngtidscovid/
Karolinska's info page on EECP (in Swedish): https://www.karolinska.se/vard/tema...terpulsation-hjarta-karl-mottagning-huddinge/
Wikipedia article on external counter pulsation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_counterpulsation
I wonder how many sessions they will be doing: That regimen sounds pretty tiring. They are using the standard woo recipe - unblinded treatment (here is supposedly a drug treatment arm, but patients are expected to just apply the medicines that are already using), recruitment selecting for people well disposed to the treatment idea, almost certainly subjective outcomes. They are also using a mixed cohort, so, even it the treatment did help for some post-Covid-19 issue, this study is unlikely to isolate it.
I've seen several control modes: nothing, waiting list, passive, active, sham, etc. I hadn't seen fantasy yet. Won't be able to say that again, I guess. Not mentioning that drug makes it appear as a kind of mystery, and maybe it's a loose translation that doesn't capture the meaning, but obviously there is no such thing as a drug treatment for LC that is of any level of effectiveness, whether for POTS or any other set of problems. Although that sure would be nice, but, you know, decades of denial, discrimination and pseudoscience and so on. And of course a blatantly useless methodology that renders the whole trial even more useless. Feels like they're just trolling. How would we even tell the difference when it looks exactly the same?
