Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 In 1987, the National Institutes of Health initiated a study, the so-called Bypass angioplasty Revascularization Investigation (BARI). In this research, 1,829 patients with multivessel disease were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first received bypass surgery; the second had balloon angioplasty. The tesults? For patients suffering heart complications from diabetes, bypass seemed to work better than angioplasty. For all others, bypass conferred no advantage: fot patients who received bypass, five year mortality was 4.6%; in the groups that received angioplasty, mortality was 4.2%. |
Lynne McTaggart
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 The other mind-body therapies would be administered an hour after the patients had undergone the angioplasty.
The results were impressive. Patients in all the noetic treatment groups enjoyed 30?0 percent improvements in health during their hospital stay, with fewer complications and a lower incidence of narrowing of the arteries compared with the controls. They also had a 25-30 percent reduction in adverse outcomes: death, heart attack, heart failure, a worsening of the state of their arteries, or a need for a repeat angioplasty. |
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II
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 Nonetheless, barring these unfavorable outcomes, angioplasty does a good job of providing temporary relief of chest pain. Of course, angioplasty does little to treat the small blockages that are most likely to lead to heart attacks.
So, upon closer examination, our seemingly beneficent mechanical advances in the field of heart disease are severely disappointing. Bypass surgery and angioplasty do not address the cause of heart disease, prevent heart attacks or extend the lives of any but the sickest heart disease patients.
What's going on here? |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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| For patients suffering heart complications from diabetes, bypass seemed to work better than angioplasty. For all others, bypass conferred no advantage: fot patients who received bypass, five year mortality was 4.6%; in the groups that received angioplasty, mortality was 4.2%.23 According to a 1998 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine: "There were no significant differences for overall mortality regardless of symptoms, left ventricular function, or number of diseased vessels. |
Andreas Moritz
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 A 1998 study, published by the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that patients who suffer a mild heart attack and are given a bypass or balloon angioplasty are more likely to die as a result of the surgery. Another study that involved researchers from 14 major heart hospitals around the world, found that up to one-third of all bypass operations were not only unnecessary, but actually hastened the death of the patient.
Angioplasty, a relatively new procedure used to open arteries, offers an even lower survival rate than bypass surgery. |
Bottom Line Health
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| In addition, call the cardiology departments of several hospitals to find out which perform emergency angioplasty to open blocked arteries and if it is done less than 90 minutes after arrival at the hospital. (Medication can be used instead, but angioplasty is generally more effective if it's done soon after arrival.) If possible, pick a hospital where your doctor has admitting privileges.
HEART ATTACK SURVIVAL CHECKLIST
•Know the symptoms. The classic heart attack symptoms are chest pain or discomfort that may also be felt in the neck or left arm and may be accompanied by nausea. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 In the Lescol Intervention Prevention Study (LIPS), 1,677 patients with heart disease who had been treated with angioplasty were randomized to fluvastatin (Lescol) or placebo.11 (Combined) risk of heart attack, death, or repeat angioplasty was 21.4% in the fluvastatin group vs. 26.7% in the placebo group. There were no differences in mortality between the groups. Although only 16% of the subjects were women, there was not a statistically significant reduction in women when looked at alone. Ten patients in the fluvastatin group (1.2%) vs. three (. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 They could inflate the balloon in an occluded blood vessel, where it crushed the blockage against the sides of the artery, extract the ballon, and then watch the flow of blood. "Angioplasty seemed to be incredibly successful in certain patients," says Lange. "Over the last twenty years we've refined our efforts. The equipment we use for doing the procedure is better.
The radiological machines are better. The drugs we use are better. But the only way to know if your improvements are beneficial, if they really improve the outcome of patients, is to measure it in clinical trials. |
| In use since the late 1980s, stents have now nearly replaced balloon angioplasty as the preferred technique for opening a blocked section of artery. Altschuler takes a wire with the stent on one end and threads it up the catheter until it rests just inside the narrow spot in Crofton's artery.
Suddenly, the room goes still. All eyes turn to a monitor that shows electrical measurements of the patient's heart. The stent has completely occluded her blood vessel, and her heart's electrical activity is registering the possibility of an actual heart attack. |
| From private payers, hospitals can reportedly make around $20,000 for an angioplasty procedure, about 40 percent of which is profit. On the flip side of the profit equation, the DRG payment for treating a heart attack patient with drugs alone and no surgical intervention—which for many patients is just as effective—produces about an 1 1 percent loss for the average hospital. |
| He might receive drugs called glycoprotein inhibitors, nicknamed "super-aspirins," to help prevent further clots from forming; beta-blockers to restore an even heartbeat; and maybe angioplasty and a stent to hold open the blocked artery.
All that new technology has helped cut the death rate from heart attacks by nearly two thirds for men in their fifties and sixties—a spectacular medical achievement. |
Ray D. Strand
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 We have our MRI and CT scanners, angioplasty, bypass surgery, total hip and knee replacement, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, antibiotics, advanced surgical techniques, advanced drugs, and intensive care units. Did all our medical advances increase U.S. life expectancy?
In 1990 our nation ranked eighteenth in life expectancy when compared to the same twenty-one industrialized nations forty years prior." In spite of the billions of dollars Americans spend on health care, we are now considered one of the worst industrialized nations in the world when it comes to life expectancy. |
| In situations like these doctors either open vessels via angioplasty (ballooning of the artery) or bypass these blockages with surgery.
If you were to spend a day following a cardiologist or cardiovascular surgeon around the hospital, you would soon realize he has to spend the majority of his time "putting out fires." He typically treats patients who are at the end of the inflammatory process, with his entire focus on attempting heroically to save a life. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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 Wu YJ, Hong CY, Lin SJ, Wu P, Shiao MS, Experimental study of Salvia miltiorrhiza on prevention of restenosis after angioplasty. Chung Kuo Chung Hsi I Chieh Ho Tsa Chih, /S:480-2, Aug. 1996
Wu YJ, Hong CY, Lin SJ, Wu P, Shiao MS, In vitro cytotoxicity of tanshinones from Salvia miltiorrhiza. Planta Med, 18:339-42, Aug. 1997
Wu YJ, Hong CY, Lin SJ, Wu P, Shiao MS, Increase of vitamin E content in LDL and reduction of atherosclerosis in cholesterol-fed rabbits by a water-soluble antioxidant-rich fraction of Salvia miltiorrhiza. Arterioscler Thromb Vase Biol, 18:481-6, Mar. |
Phyllis A. Balch, CNC
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 Many doctors recommend angioplasty or bypass surgery for people with hardening of the arteries, particularly for those with disabling angina. angioplasty is a procedure in which blocked vessels are reopened by flattening cholesterol and debris against artery walls. Bypass surgery involves taking healthy blood vessels from elsewhere in the body (usually the leg) and inserting them to detour around a diseased coronary artery. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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 They had to recognize that even though an angioplasty or bypass operation might have failed them, they could achieve control over their own disease by totally eliminating the dietary fats that had been killing them in the first place.
I did not require participants in the study to commit to any extra measures, such as exercise or meditation. There are several reasons for that. For one, it was my observation that in those cultures where coronary disease does not exist, it was diet and low cholesterol, not exercise habits or personal tranquillity, that were responsible for warding it off. |
| In angioplasty, for instance, a physician inserts a hollow tube into an artery in a leg or arm and guides it, using X-ray images, into the clogged coronary artery that is his target. A smaller catheter, with a deflated balloon at its tip, is then fed through the first. When it reaches the clogged area, the balloon is inflated—usually several times—to press the plaque against the artery wall, fracturing the plaque and the arterial wall, widening the vessel, and stripping away the delicate endothelial lining.
In recent years, the use of stents has become more common. |
| The most recent scientific evidence shows that most heart attacks are caused by younger fatty plaques—plaques too small to cause the overt symptoms that ordinarily bring on mechanical interventions like angioplasty.
Here's what happens: the lining that covers such plaques ruptures, and the fatty deposits inside leach out into the bloodstream. The body responds by rushing its clotting forces to repair the injury. |
| The reason: "Heart attacks can begin in any heart artery, not just those highly blocked vessels treated by angioplasty or stenting. So in general, the best prevention is control of risk factors that can protect every vessel in the body."5
The thesis of my research has been absurdly simple: using a plant-based nutrition program to reduce cholesterol to the levels seen in cultures that never experience heart disease. |
| He had been accepted into the study two weeks after sustaining a massive heart attack during an unsuccessful angioplasty. His unstable condition persisted and seven months later he underwent bypass surgery. His left heart chamber was so badly damaged and scarred that it was able to pump blood at less than 20 percent of its normal capacity.
Such patients have a very poor outlook. Nevertheless, this man survived. And after he had spent nearly five years on the program, a follow-up angiogram compared four of the areas where his arteries had narrowed. Two were unchanged. Two had improved. |
| Dick's cardiologists were concerned that any attempt at angioplasty or stenting could be fatal, and they scheduled an appointment for a bypass procedure with a leading cardiac surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.
As it happened, shortly after the angiogram Dick had read The China Study, T. Colin Campbell's brilliant work on nutrition and disease. He was interested in the chapters that described my work, and ultimately contacted me. On October 9, 2005, Dick and his wife, Rosalind, came to Cleveland for counseling. |
Andreas Moritz
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| Bypass, angioplasty and stent operations are really not about preventing heart attacks per se. The obvious purpose of these procedures is symptom relief. Patients are satisfied that "something" was done, relieved of the anxiety of dying from a sudden heart attack. And the doctors are satisfied that their patients are happy. The drug industry is satisfied because the patients are doomed to taking expensive drugs for the rest of their lives. |
| For one thing, the increasingly popular aggressive treatments of
* * • 28 29 opening arteries with bypass surgery, angioplasty and stents do little or nothing to prevent the recurrence of an occlusion. Although bypass surgery was found to extend the lives of some patients with severe illness, it does nothing to prevent heart attacks. As we shall see, heart attacks don't occur because of an arterial blockage, as most people assume, but because of one of the four reasons mentioned above. |
John Robbins
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 Risk of permanent brain damage from bypass surgery: 15-44 percent38
Recipients of bypass surgery for whom it prolongs life: 2 percent39
Risk of death during angioplasty: 0.4-2.8 percent40
Risk of major complications developing during angioplasty: 10 percent41
Studies that have found that angioplasty prolongs life or prevents heart attacks: Zero42
Patients undergo bypass and angioplasty operations primarily to relieve angina and improve blood flow to the heart. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Another option is angioplasty and stenting, in which a balloon is inserted via a catheter, and then expanded at the site of the clot to widen the blood vessel. A wire mesh framework, called a stent, is then placed in the artery to keep it open.
Latest development: Another new approach uses a corkscrew-shaped device called the MERCI (mechanical embolus removal in cerebral ischemia) Retriever. It is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for removing stroke-causing clots from brain arteries. |
Lynne McTaggart
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| Immediately prior to undergoing angioplasty, those assigned to receive MIT would be instructed in a method of relaxed breathing while visualizing a favorite place and listening to calming music of their choice. They would then receive healing touch for 15 minutes from a trained practitioner. These patients could also wear headphones during surgery. |
Andreas Moritz
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 In response to this grave situation—unless interfered with through a bypass operation, angioplasty, or the insertion of a stent—the body makes its own bypasses by turning existing or new capillaries into small, blood-supplying arteries. Although this option is better than surgery, it still does not significantly reduce the danger of a heart attack.
Contrary to common assumption, a heart attack does not occur as a result of blood vessel obstruction, but rather because of blood clots and/or soft fragments of atherosclerotic deposits making their way into the heart. |
Shannon Brownlee
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| About eight hundred thousand of those catheterizations are performed on people in the throes of a heart attack, the patients who generally have the most to gain from an angioplasty or stent. But the vast majority of invasive cardiology procedures aren't aimed at saving lives. They are elective procedures, which means they are performed on patients who have symptoms of heart disease—stable angina, for instance, and shortness of breath—but aren't in imminent danger of dying. Of those 1. |
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