http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/201 ... ewett.htmlCanadian Dr. Joseph Hewett has been doing neck vein angioplasty for about 15 years. He now performs balloon angioplasty on people with MS in southern California. He says the latest study has flaws and that he will continue doing the surgery until there's a "gold standard" study.
'2 doctors react to MS study'
I'm with Dr. Hewett on this one.
It is worth watching the 2 minute interview with Dr. Hewett. Here are my notes from it:
He saw two issues with the study
1 – data was doppler ultrasonography which is not the gold standard. Gold standard is the (catheter) venogram.
2- the control patients were relatives, this distorts the value of the data, these relatives may have had MS
A more valid study is Dr. Haacke's looking at a more general population (presented in italy) and 8% of people had CCSVI.
They have treated 700 patients at PI (!!) with encouraging results. He personally has 15 years jugular venous angioplasty (for what diseases, he did not say, and I am curious). In his opinion the results are not possibly placebo effect. Mounting body of evidence is that the procedure plays some role in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.