The South West London & Surrey Neurosciences Network have been successful in a funding bid to the myasthenia charity myaware which will be used to continue to ensure we can provide a Myasthenia Gravis specialist nurse to serve the South West London and Surrey populations through our SWL & Surrey Transformation Pilot work.
The awarded funding will benefit the myasthenia community in several ways:
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The myasthenia gravis nurse (Shelly Rodriguez) will act as a point of contact for patients including for relapsing patients which will enable a responsive MG service and rapid assessment and treatment of deteriorating patients.
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Working across South West London and Surrey, including multiple Trusts and a large geography, the CNS is able to ensure equity of access to specialist myasthenia care, irrespective of who is seeing the patient in a general neurology service.
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They will ensure a safe introduction of disease modifying drugs and close blood monitoring in the initial treatment stage and therefore improve patient safety.
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They will be able to counsel patients on side effects of treatments including steroids or steroid sparing agents.
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They will accelerate the workup and therefore access of patients to novel disease modifying therapies.
We look forward to continue to work closely with myaware to best support our patients living with myasthenia.