Therapy
The B-symptoms can only be successfully treated by treating the underlying disease. The disease is the trigger and will cause the symptoms as long as it is present. Unfortunately, most of the time these are diseases that require a long therapy period.
Therefore, if the B-symptomatics are very pronounced, they are treated right from the beginning. The aim is to have a positive influence on the course of the disease and to reduce the subjective pressure of suffering. The actual success, however, is the healing of the disease.
Drugs can only be used to a limited extent to treat the B symptoms. Only the increased body temperature can be reduced with them. It is rather nursing measures such as regular changing of clothes and adapted personal hygiene that can bring relief.
In case of a strong weight loss, a nutritional consultation is very useful. Here, care is taken to ensure that the calorie intake is appropriate to the state of the disease and that sufficient nutrients are provided. Depending on the basic illness, a balanced acid-base balance can also be aimed for in order to optimally support the therapy.
Duration
The duration of the B symptoms depends on the duration of the triggering disease. Conversely, this means that the B-symptoms will be present for approximately as long as the disease itself. However, they decrease in the course of effective treatment and thus reflect the success of the therapy. Since there are many different diseases that trigger B symptoms, it is not possible to give an exact indication of the duration and must be estimated individually.
B-symptomatics with tumor/cancer
A tumour can be associated with B-symptoms, but does not have to be. Conversely, this means that a B-symptomatic does not prove a malignant disease. However, in the case of a malignant tumour, colloquially known as cancer, the presence of B-symptoms is often the first indication of the presence of a tumour.
Affected persons have often blamed other unspecific symptoms such as nausea or reduced performance on other causes and only notice in the further course of the disease that their general condition has visibly worsened or changed. Particularly in the case of malignant tumours that do not take up much space in the body or grow very slowly overall, the manifestation of B symptoms is often the first sign. It is also not uncommon for the triad of B-symptoms “fever, night sweats, weight loss” to undergo a habituation effect over the usually long period of time, so that those affected only interpret their symptoms correctly in retrospect. From a clinical point of view, the presence of a B-symptomatic is to be seen as rather unfavourable from a prognostic point of view, but this may have to be corrected in individual cases. On the positive side, the search for an unknown tumour can be started and the therapy can therefore be started as soon as possible.