Let the Chelation Battle Rage

It seems my "venom-laden" tirade against Angioprim ruffled a few feathers! So, I'll swear off the swearing (for a few weeks anyway) and get to the point in a, ahhhh, kinder and gentler way. Yeah, that's the ticket! I say chelation therapy and it's proponents are FULL OF SHHHHH . . . OCKINGLY misguided and perhaps even larcenous motives. Most of what I have to say can be found here:

http://quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/chelation.html

and here:

PubMed

Perhaps the whole thing will be settled when then alternative medicine boys finish their first real study found here.

http://nccam.nih.gov/news/2002/chelation/q-and-a.htm

Of course, they are almost five years in and you would think if anything positive came up you would have some early evidence!

Yours Truly,


HeartHawk

Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry

So instead I'll swear a lot. NOTICE: IF YOU HAVE SENSITIVE EYES READ NO FURTHER . . .

OK - I WARNED YOU!! I AM PRESENTING ANOTHER LAME DUCK AWARD AND IT WON'T BE PRETTY!

While doing some research on exercise-induced hypertension, I bumped into this abomination on the web www.yourticker.com . Peruse it if you must but it is about the greasiest, lie-filled, Goddam pile of crap I have come across in quite a while (and those invectives are just a warm-up).

The latest HeartHawk "Lame Duck" award goes to "Angioprim the Original Liquid Oral Plaque Dissolver" hailed as "the most effective method to clean blocked arteries and renew health without surgery, stents, needles or hazardous drugs." MY ASS!

These little butt-monkeys go on to claim thousands of customers over ten years have "proven its effectiveness in opening blocked arteries." Geez, where are the signed affidavits and angiographic evidence? You say you have none? WELL NO SHIT! IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE TELLING GODDAM LIES! These flesh-sacks actually have the audacity to publish what they claim is a list of customer telephone numbers you can call for testimonials. Well guess who these ass-hats REALLY are? THEIR F*CKIN' SALES REPS! I don't know what pisses me off more, being lied to or treated like an idiot. Note to the Angioprim marketing department: you might want to consider asking the pot-heads who program your website to change your URL query-string variable from "RepID" to something the average ASP programmer like myself can't decipher. The illusion really disappears when you call one of the numbers and the phone is answered something like, "ACME Distributors." What a bunch of morons, but, we already knew that.

Now here is the kicker. What do these lying SACKS OF SHIT want to bill you for a standard "Primary Cleaning" pack of Angioprim? Hey, only $399 (more if they manage to set the hook deeper)! Can you say, "BITE ME?!" They even have a "Dream Big" page where you can sign-up to be a sales rep if you're willing to pay a monthly fee for the right to sell into one or more selected zip codes (that's right, you pay a seperate monthly fee for each zip code you select and they bill your credit card directly). You can quit anytime but OF COURSE they will bill you for one extra month. Talk about having big cajones! These money-grubbers are off the hook!

At the end of the day, what we have here are a bunch of chelation therapy charlatans looking to make a quick buck off desperate heart disease patients. I mean c'mon, how low can you get? Next stop, my local consumer fraud agency. Seems some of their reps are right here in Wisconsin. How convenient! HeartHawk's a comin' boys. I'd call a lawyer if I wuz you!

Gosh, I get ornery when I'm sick!


HeartHawk

Yet Another Crack in the Wall

Well folks, I'm back on my feet (well on my butt and at my desk anyway) after a NASTY case of the flu to report that maybe, just maybe, the traditional medical establishment will one day "get it."

A March 19, 2007 study released in the American Heart Association journal Circulation showed that multi-slice CT heart scanning can predict with 100% sensitivity (people who test negative and are not having a heart attack) and 92% specificity (people who test positive and are having a heart attack) whether a person who enters an emergency room with chest pain is actually having a heart attack. It's negative predictive value was 100% over the course of a 15 month follow-up. Not one study participant who tested negative and was released had a heart attack.

"Although not all emergency-department patients with chest pain require CT imaging for risk stratification, the present study demonstrates applicability of the technique to selected patients in the population with intermediate risk in whom the incremental value of noninvasive imaging may have a significant impact on patient management," the authors concluded.

Sometimes (not often) it just makes me laugh the way some of these rocket scientists think. Let's see, we can do a bunch of expensive blood tests that tell us that you MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be having a heart attack, we can cut you open and shove a catheter into your heart (a surgicially invasive procedure that exposes you to as much raditation as a scan), or we can have you lay down and, in 10 minutes, non-invasively take a picture that tells us if there are any actual blockages with near 100% accuracy. Uh, I vote for number 3!

It is amazing how long it has taken "modern" medicine to make it this far. Oh well, they'll probably come around sometime in the next decade or so. Until then, it is still up to you to stay alert, stay informed, and stay alive!

(Cough, Cough, Sneeze, %*&#$@!) Regards,

HeartHawk

Finally, A Crack in the Wall!

For about a decade now the American Heart Association in conjunction with interventional cardiologists belonging to the American College of Cardiology have successfully waged a war against heart scan screening as a tool for identifying asymptomatic or "hidden" heart disease. Given the enormous profits generated by stents and by-pass surgery I think everyone can understand why they fear any move towards prevention over invasive procedures.

I mentioned back on March 5th that, eventually, this will change and suggested it will take a major medical malpractice suit to shake the foundations of traditional medicine. Now it appears the Texas State Legislature may deliver the first seldgehammer blow to the wall. Citing the new SHAPE guidelines (Track Your Plaque members can read about it in THIS ARTICLE) issued by the Association for the Eradication of Heart Attacks (AEHA) and his own personal experience with heart disease and heart scanning, Texas Representative René Oliveira (D-Brownsville) formally filed his Texas Heart Attack Prevention Bill his first full day back in office after by-pass surgery, a procedure he underwent after a CT scan indicated severe coronary blockages. The bill would mandate insurance coverage for heart scanning to a maximum amount of $200. See the full story (along with goofy rebuttals - Where the hell does Nissen get off calling ANYONE a shameless self-promoter) at HeartWire.

One the major impediments to obtaining a heart scan is cost especially for lower income individuals. Representative Oliveira correctly notes that the added insurance cost of the scans is dwarfed by the cost savings generated by reducing heart attacks through early detection and treatment of asymptomatic heart disease. YA THINK?! This situation is the same one faced by early proponents of mammography to detect breast cancer in its most treatable stages. They too were held back by the medical establishment and short-sighted insurers only to be proven right years - and many painful deaths - later.

If nothing else, this "shot across the bow" by the Texas Legislature may open some eyes and begin the inevitable process toward enlightment and a big "I TOLD YOU SO" by none other than li'l ole HeartHawk.

And the walls came tumblin' down!


HH

Latest Study on DES Stent Thrombosis Is In

The Bern-Rotterdam analysis, one of three major studies looking at the phenomena of stent thrombosis in Drug Eluting Stents (DES) has been published in the February 24 issue of The Lancet. The study looked at late-stent thrombosis rates (>30 days after stenting) from 2002 to 2005 for Sirolimus-Eluting Stents (SES) and Paclitaxel-Eluting Stents (PES).

8146 patients underwent stenting at hospitals that adopted policies of 100% DES use with SES ( 3823 patients) and PES (4323 patients). A total of 152 angiographically documented stent thromboses occurred, of which 61 were late-stent thromboses. The rate of stent thrombosis was 1.3 per 100 person-years with a cumulative incidence of 2.9%.

Rates of early-stent thrombosis were similar for the SES and PES but were more common in PES-treated patients (1.8% vs 1.4%). The authors cautioned that the rates for the 2 stents cannot accurately be compared since PES tended to be used in more complex lesions and follow-up in these patients was not as long as it was for the SES patients.

Of note was the fact that 87% taking dual antiplatelet therapy (aspirin and Plavix) experienced early stent thrombosis (<30>

Two unanswered questions remain.

1. Is the higher risk of DES stent thrombosis offset by the reduced risk of stent restenosis as compared to bare metal stents (BMS)?

2. What critieria could more effectively conclude which patients would be better off using DES versus BMS.

If nothing else, two conclusions can also be drawn.

1. We have begun to quantify DES risks so we will soon have metrics to compare different DES technologies versus BMS and under what circumstances each provides the best outcome.

2. It is still better to prevent heart disease using a proactive approach such as heart scans, lipoprotein analysis, and proper preventive measures than to wait until a stent is the only option.

Studiously Yours,

HeartHawk

They STILL Just Don't Get It!!!

Every Monday, my local "big-city" newspaper publishes a special health section which I, of course, always read. The first thing I noticed was a lead article about garlic. The headline read, "Crushing garlic may cut loss of healthful compounds." Although over half the article discussed the recent study showing garlic had no LDL reducing effects (something I blogged about last week) the newspaper felt that "crushing garlic" was the story.

But, what really caught my eye was a small, inset feature beneath the garlic story titled "Know-It-All Facts." In this week's edition they published a brief on modifiable and unmodifiable risk factors for heart disease. One of the "unmodifiable" risk factors listed was "age" followed by this statement, "About 83% of coronary disease occurs in people 65 and older." The statement was attributed to the American Heart Association. TALK ABOUT GETTING IT COMPLETELY WRONG! Perhaps 83% of of heart attacks, strokes, angioplasties, by-passes, and other catastophic coronary events occur in people over 65 but, make no mistake, those person's coronary disease started LONG BEFORE they were 65!

The above incident is further proof that the general public, with the aid of the traditional medical establishment, continues to be misinformed and misled. What the hell are they trying to say, that I should not be begin to worry about heart disease until I am 65, when it is too late to do anything but go under the knife? Thanks, AHA, for nothing! Heart disease is NOT a plumbing problem, it is a prevention problem. It starts early (well before age 65), is chronic, and only catastophic if you fail to take early steps to head it off.

DAMMIT, this is pure malfeasance and malpractice! What else can you call it when the tools and technology are there to prevent catastophic disease but doctors continue to let it go so they can carve you up? But the day is coming when the medical establishment, insurance companies, and the rest will pay. CLICK HERE to read about how it is going to happen!

Monday and grumpy!


HeartHawk