Allergies are commonly a bodily reaction to harmful substances. The best ENT doctor in Delhi has emphasized that allergy symptoms can be mild to life-threatening. Based on the severity of the allergic conditions, allergy treatments are recommended. Mainly, allergy shots or immunotherapy for some time are provided to reduce allergy attacks.
What makes these shots effective is the presence of a small amount of substances like allergens to trigger the allergic reactions. However, rest assured that these allergens only stimulate the immune system and do not cause any heinous allergic reaction.
What is Immunotherapy?
If you search online for “ear pain cause and treatment in Hindi” or related searches, the most common cause will be due to some allergies. Immunotherapy is a preventive treatment that slowly tries to desensitize you to the allergens you are primarily allergic to. So, immunotherapy increases the doses of the allergens slowly in the body and causes the immune system to be less sensitive to the substances. It happens with the production of antibodies to reduce allergic symptoms in the future.
Your ENT doctor in Delhi might recommend immunotherapy to reduce inflammation in asthma and rhinitis. Before starting the treatment, the allergist searches for the allergens you are sensitive to with skin or blood tests. It can be reactionary substances like grass pollens, house dust, or bee stings. Based on that, immunotherapy is suggested for people who are selectively sensitive to allergens.
Why do the ENT Doctor in Delhi Recommend Immunotherapy?
A reputed ENT doctor in Delhi prescribes immunotherapy in specific situations-
- When medications fail to control the serious symptoms. So, it leads to a lot of suffering due to allergic reactions.
- There can be times when you can’t continue the allergic medications because they interact with other medications and create troubling side effects.
- You wish to curb the long-term intake of strong allergy medications.
- When you are allergic to insects or bee stings.
So, the doctor would suggest allergic shots to prevent seasonal allergies like asthma or fever symptoms and indoor substances like cockroaches, dust mites, or insect stings. However, for chronic hives or food allergies, these shots won’t work.
Types of Immunotherapy
Primarily, three types of immunotherapy are there, which are:
- Allergy shots or subcutaneous immunotherapy.
- Sublingual, under-the-tongue immunotherapy.
- Allergy medications like antihistamines and decongestants.
How Immunotherapy Works?
In simple words, immunotherapy progresses like a vaccine. Your body responds to the specific amount of an allergen injected in gradually increasing doses. In this way, these allergy shots incrementally develop tolerance or immunity to the allergen. The top ENT doctor in Delhi claims that these allergy shots work in phases. Here’s how-
- Build Up Phase
This phase is about receiving the injections with a gradual increase in the allergen dose of about one to two times every week. The extent of this phase is based on how often the patients receive the injections but generally varies from 3-6 months.
- Maintain Phase
Once the body receives the proper effective dose, this maintenance phase begins. The effective phase is based on every patient’s level of allergen sensitivity and their response to the initial build-up phase. There’s no fixed period for this phase, and the immunologist decides which range is effective for the patient.
From the buildup phase itself, patients may show signs of improvement. However, to the extreme, it may also take as much as 12 months from the maintenance phase to have a decrease in symptoms.
FAQ
Are there any risks of taking immunotherapy?
In most cases, people don’t have any danger by receiving immunotherapy. However, some reactions are possible because the shots contain allergic substances. Your ENT doctor in Delhi might suggest three types of reactions, such as local reactions like redness or swelling, systematic reactions like nasal congestion or hives, and the rare but life-threatening anaphylaxis. The immunologists recommend attaining regular weekly or monthly shots without fail to avoid any serious reaction.
Conclusion
So, to incrementally cure allergies and reactions to allergic substances, consult the best ENT doctor in Delhi for allergy treatments. However, it’s important to understand that allergic symptoms take time to improve. It may extend to as long as three years to get desensitized to the allergens. Therefore, patients must have tolerance and endurance to trust the process of allergy treatment.
