The Reasons are Numerous as Follows:
Success Rates – Allergy drops work for 90% of patients vs only 60% with shots
Onset of Action – Allergy drops begin working very quickly w/ 50% of patients having excellent symptomatic relief within a month and 90% in 6 months vs shots that require a least 6-12 months in order to see results.
Convenience – Allergy drops are extremely convenient taking only a few seconds to place under the tongue at home each day vs shots, which require extremely inconvenient hour-long visits to the allergist’s office twice weekly.
Safety – Allergy drops are extremely safe and can be used to treat infants vs shots, which due to severe and potentially fatal side effects prevents their usage in children under six years of age.
Number of Allergens Treated – Allergy drops provide treatment for full 170 different allergens thereby protecting you no matter where you live or travel in the world. On the other hand, all Phoenix offices that do shots and 90% of offices that do allergy drops only protect their patients for a handful or so of allergens specific to the Desert Southwest, leaving them unprotected when anywhere else in the country/world.
Pain – Allergy drops are painless vs shots which are obviously painful.
Cost Effectiveness - The drops are very cost effective. They are $100/monthly for the first 3 ½ months, and then $80/monthly for the remainder of the three-year period necessary to provide a long-standing remission or cure. The patient is seen for 10 office visits total during those three years. On the other hand, allergy shots require a 1 hour visit twice weekly. Thus, 104 annual visits and 104 hours, which is 4 ½ days the patient will spend in the allergists’s office getting allergy shots in the first year and hundreds of visits over the six years that they are required to take shots. So a huge investment in time and costs commuting to and from all of those office visits, never mind all of the associated copays. It takes six years for shots to provide a long-standing remission or cure versus the three years required with allergy drops.
Do They Treat for Food Allergies? – With drops the answer is a resounding “Yes”. We were one of the very first clinics in the world to offer treatment for food and peanut allergies vs shots for which they do not have a treatment for food or peanut allergies.
Worldwide Acceptance – Allergy drops are considered the “gold standard” in the world for the treatment of allergies and asthma. They are utilized almost exclusively by every other country with the exception of the United States vs shots which have been abandoned by other countries decades ago because of the numerous advantages that drops have over shots as listed above. Shots, as it turns out, are substantially more profitable than allergy drops for our American allergists with some suspecting that as the reason why drops are not utilized here in the U.S. as they are by the rest of the world.
