Kudos to Manitoba’s health minister, Theresa Oswald, who has just sent a letter to her federal and provincial counterparts requesting their support for a national randomized clinical trial of CCSVI treatment. In doing so, Manitoba’s NDP government has taken a slightly different approach, while still positioning itself alongside Saskatchewan, the first province to announce funding for a clinical trial of venoplasty (similar to angioplasty) in MS patients with blocked neck and chest veins.
Stating that MS patients have been waiting too long for a treatment breakthrough, Mrs. Oswald commented in her August 16th letter that the time has come for Canada’s top scientists “to work together to try and find scientifically sound answers as to whether this procedure is effective.
“We need to talk about working together on how to do this instead of wasting time on a whole bunch of small studies. We would hope that patients from across the land would be involved and that would include Manitobans as well. We know [MS patients] are very passionate and they want answers and I believe they deserve answers," Mrs. Oswald told the Winnipeg Free Press. She also noted that even if a large study concludes that there is no causal link between CCSVI and MS, it could determine that unblocking veins helps relieve symptoms of the disease.
Her statement and insightful comments were timed to coincide with an upcoming August 26th meeting in Ottawa of a panel of CCSVI “experts” who have been invited to discuss their thoughts on the issue with Canadian federal health minister, Leona Aglukkaq, and her advisors.
Who will be next to join Saskatchewan and Manitoba? Some observers believe it will be British Columbia. That province’s Ministry of Health convened a meeting on August 11th to which representatives from the College of Physicians and Surgeons and MS Society, among others, were invited. So far, not much has been said publicly, but meetings such as this usually indicate an intense interest in seeking common ground with the intent to move forward. Time will tell.
Whenever, and wherever, politicians and experts meet to discuss the pros and cons of clinical trials of CCSVI treatment, they would do well to keep in mind the incredible case of Steve Garvie.
The Barrie, Ontario, time-share salesman had been fighting a ten-year losing battle with secondary progressive MS. Wracked with fatigue, body pain, weakness and numbness of his left hand and leg, he suffered a progressive loss of mobility and bladder function. Conventional interferon therapy and other “MS drugs” had been of little use to him and were long abandoned. Increasingly confined to his house, he became depressed over his bleak future.
All that began to change for Steve last December after he watched Avis Favaro’s W5 report on Dr. Paolo Zamboni, an Italian vascular surgeon whose research indicated that multiple sclerosis may be a vascular disease resulting from blocked veins in the neck or chest that causes blood to reflux backwards and leak into the brain, resulting in progressive tissue damage that destroys nerve cells.
Zamboni’s findings came as a bolt out of the blue to Steve and thousands of other Canadians battling what was long assumed to be a primary auto-immune disorder of the brain and central nervous system.
With a printout of the W5 story in hand, Steve went to his GP. “I don’t watch TV,” the doctor told him after he asked whether she had seen the report. But after insisting that she read the printout as he sat in her office, her attitude changed to one of interest. “How can I help you?” she asked. “You can get me in for a Doppler (ultrasound),” Steve replied.
Luckily, Dr. Sandy McDonald, a Barrie cardiothoracic surgeon, ran a nearby private imaging clinic. After Steve’s Doppler exam indicated an abnormality in his left jugular vein, Dr. McDonald referred him to Dr. Christopher Guest, an interventional radiologist at Barrie’s Royal Victoria Hospital. Dr. Guest injected dye into Steve’s neck and chest veins. There was no doubt about it. The left jugular vein had a severe stenosis.
A few weeks later, with Dr. McDonald looking on, Dr. Guest inserted a balloon catheter into the blocked jugular and successfully relieved the obstruction. “As soon as he opened the vein the numb feeling disappeared from my left thumb and first three fingers. I could move my hand and even shook hands with the nurse as I lay on the table,” Steve recounted to me in a recent phone call.
Over the next weeks and months, things got better and better. “I continue to improve. Most of the numbness has now left my hands. My left foot’s colour has returned and I am now drug-free, completely. The pills for my bladder got left behind 2 weeks ago. Life is good,” Steve wrote in a recent e-mail. Then, for good measure, he added these words: “By the way, it has been over 6 months now since my angioplasty and by their [the neurologists] own criteria , I am not a placebo.”
And what message does Steve have for Theresa Oswald? “Tell her she is a very compassionate and caring person, showing true leadership,” he stated. Amen.
Breaking news. We have just learned the answer to “who’s next”. Literally as I finished this blog, Quebec’s health minister, Yves Bolduc, announced that “he's ready to join other provinces in a national clinical trial of a controversial treatment for multiple sclerosis.”
So now whose next? Stay tuned…..