In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Sarah Keating. As an anatomic pathologist for more than 35 years, Sarah worked on staff at a number of hospitals in Ontario as well as at Ontario Forensic Pathology Services. She is recently retired but is passionate about learning as much as possible about tick borne diseases in order to help improve the access to care for suffering patients. She maintains her affiliation with the University of Toronto as an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology. Sarah has been a member of the CanLyme board since 2022 and she is also an active member of ILADS – the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society.
Sarah is committed to spreading awareness of the potential causative role of tick-borne diseases in mental illness, promoting education of Canadian health care practitioners and policy makers in tick-borne diseases, and promoting the role of tissue diagnosis to increase our understanding of these diseases.
Topics discussed
1:25 How Dr. Keating became interested in becoming a pathologist
2:20 What being a pathologist entails
3:06 What led Dr. Keating to be interested in Lyme disease
4:13 How pathology and Lyme disease intersect, and what a biobank is
5:38 Access to new information to Lyme for medical professionals
6:10 The importance of curiosity in medicine and the troubles of misinformation
7:09 ILADS conference in 2024, and Dr. Keating’s role at the conference for CanLyme
8:55 Support for healthcare practitioners who treat Lyme through CanLyme
10:12 The most helpful takeaways from ILADS conference 2024 and the trouble with Canadian Lyme disease testing
11:12 Differences in international standards for diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease
12:37 The role of climate change in the spread of Lyme disease
13:45 The activities that CanLyme is currently running
14:14 The potential of tick borne diseases in mental illnesses
16:35 What keeps Dr. Keating motivated
17:45 Dr. Keating’s suggestions for those who have been recently diagnosed with Lyme disease
Get a tick removal kit
CanLyme’s Tick Removal Kit has everything you need to properly remove and store a tick for further identification and testing, and is easy to pack and find in your backpack, purse, glove box, first aid kit and in your home.
She points to the different roles practitioners have in a patient’s care, including primary care physicians and specialists such as neurologists and cardiologists. Finally she reiterates the importance of prevention and of adequate early treatment, to prevent the chronic symptoms of Lyme disease.
A growing concern for many outdoor workers across the country is the risk of a tick encounter in their workplace. Fortunately there are steps that employers and employees can take to reduce the risk of tick bites and tick-borne illnesses. Increased awareness is an important first step, and creating and implementing policies in the workplace…
Sarah explores an integrative approach to medicine with Dr. Kenneth Bock from the Hudson Valley, in New York. Dr. Bock’s natural curiosity, investigative approach, along with his appreciation for complex medical cases set the foundation for his integrative practice. His first Lyme patient in 1985 initially came in with a swollen toe that didn’t seem…
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