Dr. Anand Alurkar has performed literally thousands of interventional and diagnostic angioplastic series of intra and extracranial procedures
in the past 10 years. He has also been following his patients on a
long-term basis to determine his own evidence as to the result of
removing vessel occlusions. “Because MS is not a disease where we see
great numbers at this latitude, there are no issues surrounding what
should and what should not be done. We will simply treat the vascular
malformations most of these patients seem to have. We do not have
entrenched ideas about what MS is that creates the strong bias against
this “liberation therapy” that we are seeing in North America and the
UK. I am a neurosurgeon, but where I see a vascular disease with CNS
involvement, I treat it. I really don’t care that a diagnostic label
exists that precludes an individual patient from being treated for what
is clearly a vascular problem, or even whether it has anything to do
with the MS. As far as I’m concerned, once diagnosis determines that
there are occluded veins in the neck or head, this is not a condition
that we see in healthy people. These venous obstacles must be removed
for normal blood flow. Furthermore, vein opening treatments should be
performed as soon as early stage symptoms appear. We are seeing patients
who have obviously lived with this condition for years if not decades.
MS may be only one disease risk for a patient where venous malformations
are noted. There are other symptoms like headaches, chronic fatigue,
vasoconstrictive disorders, and even more serious diseases like optic
neuropathies, osteopetrotic syndromes, DVT and others that have known
links. This is enough reason alone to treat. But it’s truly hard to
believe that serious vascular problems in the necks have not been linked
with MS where it’s been studied in great numbers of people for many
decades.”
In addressing criticism from a noted Canadian neurologist, Dr. J. Murray who said that he is “interfering in the safe treatment of MS patients
and risking lives with an unproven and experimental procedure”, Alurkar
went on to say: “I really don’t see where the simple vascular procedure
has much to do with the other medications like Avonex, Copaxone or
beta-serin that the patient may be taking. These may be important MS
disease symptom relieving drug therapies, but let’s all understand that
they have nothing to do with the malformations in the veins that I am
going to correct where I find them. I am correcting a vascular problem
and I perform that same procedure everyday on other patients with the
blockages who also have multiple health problems and are also on
comprehensive pharmacological treatment regimens. What makes MS patients
so unique that they shouldn’t be touched? I’m somewhat puzzled by a
neurologist even having an opinion that what I’m doing is an improper
medical procedure in the same way I would not presume to interfere with
the drug management of his patient. These are two different things. But
if a link (between MS and CCSVI) is established in the future, it’s not
soon enough to keep patients with venous malformations safe from many
other risks. And if there indeed is a link, given that MS is a
progressive disease, treatment of the vascular problem is even more
time-critical. As for the theory of elevated levels of iron refluxing to
the brain causing MS, it’s reasonable to speculate that MS,
hemochromatosis, and other disease conditions could result from such an
origin. The fact is we really don’t know enough, but this goes for all
theories about what causes MS. At this point CCSVI as a causal link is
more valid than any of the other theories regarding viral causes,
because every one of those theories has been disproven.”
Dr Alurkar went on to comment about what Noble Hospital is doing for their MS patients: “We have established a safety and effectiveness
protocol for treating CCSVI and we take the current protocols that are
being practiced in Poland and Bulgaria many more steps further. In our
opinion, the biggest problem is not the procedure, but what happens
afterwards. We give our patients a far better chance of full and
complete and most importantly, permanently recovery, when we keep them
in the hospital for a few more days to observe and re-treat if
necessary. This may be difficult to do where hospital admission and stay
costs are so high, but we know that for the patient, it’s worth doing
right. We do not think that a single day or less in the hospital
post-procedure is particularly safe or effective long-term because of
the two ways this will go. It may not be enough time for the
hemodynamics to return to a normal permanent state where the patient
isn’t movement controlled given that veins are weaker and more fragile
structures than arteries. From a clinical perspective, not only are the
Zamboni protocols inadequate, they don’t address the real problems for
the patient. The high rate of re-stenosis in patients who have had the
procedure speaks to this, so it’s time new protocols were
developed…which is what we’ve done.”
And if you think that your results will be better in Poland, think again. Alurkar says: “The rate of re-stenosis is still 50%. For patients
who are going to have a difficult time accessing a follow-up operation
when they return home if the symptoms re-occur, we think that our
protocol makes more sense not only from a safety point of view, but just
from the cost savings. I’m really not sure why anyone would spend
$20,000 to go somewhere just to get the vein opening procedure done
knowing that there’s an even chance that it will just occlude someplace
else within six months or a year. That doesn’t make any sense to me
because the facts bear that out. We know that India is a bit farther
than Mexico, Poland or Costa Rica, but the extra hours and days in the
hospital you spend with our protocol is important to a successful health
outcome. Patients really need to understand that safety and effective
treatment is our primary concern, whereas everybody else seems to be
focused on money”.
The method that Dr. Alurkar and his colleagues have developed has been used effectively for similarly treated disease conditions and Noble
Hospital is now planning on launching a joint study with the CCSVI
Clinic to prove the hypothesis. Alurkar added: “All of this medical
tourism and the quest for the quick dollar puts everything that Zamboni
did in jeopardy of heavy criticism from the medical establishment when
the procedure fails. That’s why he (Zamboni) said that he no longer
supported doing the procedure outside of clinical trials. That’s why we
are doing our own studies that will confirm statistically what we say is
as accurate for the liberation procedure as for our other treatments”.
http://ccsviclinic.ca/?p=702