Jordan Weinstein said:

MA>You continue to post this same argument.
  >You mention the CASS study but fail to understand the whole study. It did
  >show that certain groups did benefit from coronary artery bypass grafting;
  >those with left main coronary artery disease and those with three
  >vessel disease with left ventricular dysfunction. You seemed to ignore
  >these conclusions. Why did you do so? Continued follow-up of these
  >patients has been published and still agree with the conclusions stated
  >above. Please update yourself or least attempt to fully understand the
  >studies. You are misleading people by "quoting" a study with the wrong
  >conclusions.

I wonder if we are perhaps talking about two things.

If arteries are so badly clogged that angioplasty can not help, perhaps
the only recourse at that moment, especially if no damage to the heart
has taken place yet., is bypass surgery.  However, after this is done,
it is my understanding that many people continue to clog up their
vessels and additional bypass surgery may be necessary.

We now have three friends who have had bypass surgery.

One of them swore he would never go through it again, and began to try
other approaches, including regular medications.  He was told he was
clogging up again, and tried chelation, which appears to have cleared
the condition, the the point that his cardiologist tells him he no
longer needs another bypass.

Our second friend is watching his diet extremely closely and taking
daily excercise.  It's only a year since his surgery, and I don't know
how his tests are reading.

Our third friend just had surgery last week.

Personally, I suspect that chelation might be a better early
intervention/preventive technique than a substitute for surgery at the
moment someone has a heart attack and they find severely clogged
vessels.

---
 t SLMR 2.1a #1424 t Easy as 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971694...

Babette Bloch said:

I think you and I are referring to different issues. I was responding to
the argument that coronary artery bypass is "quackery." The argument
contained some inaccuracies that I addressed.

You bring up an important point here, i.e., that many patients'
atherosclerosis continue to progress. Bypass, in addition to angioplasty, is
meant to delay further adverse events. How long that delay happens to be
depends on many factors, of which some of your friends have attempted.
Medicines (such as beta-blockers), lowering one's cholesterol, quitting
smoking, exercise, etc. have all been shown to decrease the incidence of
further cardiovascular events on top of appropriate use of coronary bypass
and angioplasty. Before adding chelation therapy to the above, it should be
properly tested to see if it truly improves survival or decreases further
adverse cardiovascular events.

It is great to hear about your friends' situations and possible
improvement with chelation therapy! But physicians have been fooled by
ancedotal data in the past. For example, magnesium very recently was
suggested as adjunctive therapy immediately post-heart attack to improve
survival. Initial studies and anecdotal data showed improvement. When
a large study was performed, this was found not to be true.

I believe that the way you phrased your statement above is better than
the manner used in some statements from other advocates of chelation
therapy. "Personally, I suspect ..." is appropriate until well-controlled
 studies have demonstrated a benefit.

Jordan Weinstein

Perhaps you did not see the posting some months ago by Tim Reynolds
when he gave an example of cardiac bypass surgeons not being aware
that clogging up would recur unless the patient was put on aggressive
cholesterol reduction therapy after the surgery.

The question would be: was your friend on cholesterol reduction
therapy ? and I mean medications in addition to sensible diet
control ?

Bye,