Quote:
Originally Posted by redforever
My main issue is, some people suffering from MS have a blockage in a vein in their body, and they are refused treatment for that blockage....while anyone else with a blockage is given the option for treatment of that blockage.
I am not looking at this as a sure all treatment for the cure of MS. I am looking at this from the angle that some citizens in this country have blockages and are refused treatment for such...and as I said before, I do not think it is in anyone's best interest to have a blockage that goes untreated in their body.
And to make it worse, MS patients are not even afforded an ultrasound to check if a blockage exists.
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You are being way too simplistic about a very complicated issue. This is not a black or white concept (ie. blocked/unblocked), rather its a spectrum of venous narrowing and resultant flow dynamics +/- temperature changes/iron deposition/other theories. Furthermore, the clinical distinction between when normal becomes abnormal has yet to be legitimately determined, let alone whether any of this is relevant to MS. As an incidental radiologic finding, we see subjective narrowing of these vessels all time in normal people, should we start venoplastying them too to prevent the
inevitable MS? What about all the other incidental vessels we see with apparent narrowing but no clinical findings? What about the normal physiologic changes we see in venous caliber depending on hydration status?
Funny how many posters cite angioplasty as a justification for treatment of MS: Did you know that cardiologists are only starting to realize now that visibly narrowed coronary arteries (which they used to angioplasty like mad on spect) does not necessarily correlate with a functional (ie. flow limiting) narrowing? They've been laying down stents for decades without questioning it, ironically predisposing vessels that did not need to be 'fixed', to future narrowing due to the very presence of that stent. This is ignoring the acute complications that can arise like dissected/ruptured vessels, strokes, ischemic limbs, compartment syndromes and death. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
MS is a drawn out disease progressing over decades, with a character that is known to vary in time and space. Yet the studies to date span only a relatively short term, and its much too early to say whether these 'improvements' are real, placebo, or just part of the expected course of the disease.