Many people who happen to get afflicted with lichen planus often end up, in the long run, spending considerably huge fortunes on the condition’s treatment. Thus, you could expect treatment for lichen planus to be rather costly. It is a natural reaction for some people to wonder why these treatments cost a lot. Now, it becomes more a question of what makes the treatments so pricey that patients have no other alternative but to shell out that much amount of cash and resources. That is the question we will now attempting to get answered.
Now the first factor that tends to make treatment for lichen planus to be rather expensive is something to do with the fact that the condition can, in some cases, be quite hard to diagnose. Thus, many people may have to go to several physicians, before one of the physicians, in a flash of genius, figures out that the condition in question is actually lichen planus. Keep in mind that every single consultation made with every medical professional means you’re bound to pay something. In some other conditions, treatment is cheaper for the simple reason that patients have been able to make the correct diagnosis themselves. For lichen planus, however, that is easier said than done.
The second factor that tends to make treatment for lichen planus to be rather expensive is something to do with the fact that many people don’t believe the initial diagnosis. You can credit that to man’s natural response to be pessimistic. Thus, when people with lichen planus are told by their doctors that they are ‘just’ suffering from lichen planus,’ they tend to disbelieve that diagnosis. They convince themselves that they must be ‘suffering from something worse.’ Thus they go to other doctors, seeking a second, even third, opinions. Naturally, the more doctors they visit, the more costs they will incur in terms of consultation fees.
Of course, lichen planus is a tricky condition. It is hard to pinpoint an effective regime for its treatment at once. That is another reason why the costs tend to run up. Often, the trial and error approach has to be conducted by a doctor and the patient before they find a treatment that they both deem fully acceptable and very effective. In the meantime, the patient has to keep on spending money buying the drugs. By the time they have identified a treatment regimen that works and they could stick to, the expenses would have already run high. Thankfully, as the body of knowledge about this condition keeps on growing, the need for such trial therapies is going down.
Relief from the symptoms of lichen planus is something that can be found, and the patients can have a lot of assistance on that front. But if you want to rely entirely on conventional medicine to find a permanent cure for it, you may find yourself having a hard time. Patients who dare venture into the non-conventional (alternative) sphere of medicine may get lasting cures: so the situation is not so hopeless. In a nutshell, treatment for lichen planus may cost a lot of money, but it usually works – at least in terms of giving the patient relief for a considerable period of time.
