You must weigh the benefits of traveling to a foreign site against the benefits.
For example, a few doctors around the world have done many of these procedures. But each of them stresses the need for follow up, so staying close to home might have some benefit.
Within the next few months, there may be a "recipe" for doing CCSVI venograms. This kind of procedure has been done for decades, but there are fine points to treating CCSVI that hopefully will be contained in the documentation. Dr. Hubbard, among others, says that retreatment may be necessary, and you may (or may not) want to stick with the same doctor if future treatment is required.
www,CCSVI.org offers basic information for both the patient and any doctor you choose to work with. At
http://www.hubbardfoundation.org, the Hubbard Institute can provide a package of information that will help capture the data from your mother's treatment so it can be studied to help identify what method(s) and treatment(s) are best.
Some countries outside the US have fewer restrictions on exposure to radiation. Some doctors are claiming universal success without providing documentation to prove their claims.
After the procedure, your mother may need medication to prevent clotting, screening to judge the effectiveness of the treatment and/or to access the likelihood of restenosis and perhaps physical therapy.
Because this is an exciting but extremely new form of treatment, if your mother is not experiencing extreme difficulty, it might be advisable to wait a few months until the procedure is more studied for the most effective methodology. There are few patients who have been successfully treated more than a year ago, so this concept is still evolving.
I was treated about nine months ago by a doctor who took a very conservative approach. He found several problems, but only treated one. The net result was that I got no benefit. I intend to be retreated, but I will be a much more skeptical (and hopefully wiser) patient the next time.
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