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I said this in the CCSVI forum and I'll say it here. It's hard for me to believe that they could only find 1 case of CCSVI in 76 people (including 56 with MS) when a study at BNAC managed to find CCSVI in somewhere around ~20-25% of healthy controls in their study.

As someone who works in a field of benchmarking and marketing data, when almost all existing studies have found the existence of something and you can't find it at all, that feels like user error to me.

Dr. Sclafani is now going over the paper for his IRB approval. He made this comment on his thread, regarding the breathing discrepancy I caught between the two studies__

this was helpful to me.

the reason dr zamboni wants the study done in inspiration is to activate the thoracic pump and increase blood flow through the jugular veins. it is the overwhelming of the outflow volume that leads to the reflux in ccsvi.

so, the breath cycle as part of the measurement is important to Dr. Zamboni, and maybe why German measurements taken during valsalva and breath holding would be different. Seems like a small point, but now Dr. S is reading the paper, so I can sign off.
cherer
cheer

Cheer,

I just want to thank you for all your incredibly hard work, research, dedication to this forum and constant willingness to reason things out and bring a different perspective to all the questions put on here. I am blown away by your knowledge and caring.

You are the best,
Drury

AMcG wrote:[...]I did not know about them defining reflux as having a duration of greater than 0.88 sec. The figure I remember Zamboni quoting was 0.5 sec. I really don’t think they had a lot of results in the 0.5 to 0.8 range but I do wonder where the 0.88 sec comes from.[...]

The 0.5 sec threshold refers to intracranial reflux.

Malden wrote:

cheerleader wrote: ...
Anyhoo...all I know is Zamboni made a big deal in Bologna about no breath holding, no valsalva, his method was different.
...

Yes, "...his method was different".
But, in the same time, that doesn't mean that his method is correct, or the others methods are incorrect or he is right and the others are wrong.

M.

But what's the point in doing research using a different method? All it proves is that their method is not effective. It doesn't signify anything more.

If I make an omelette with a new recipe and it tastes awful it doesn't mean that my original recipe is no good or that omelettes are not nice.

L wrote:

Malden wrote:

cheerleader wrote: ...
Anyhoo...all I know is Zamboni made a big deal in Bologna about no breath holding, no valsalva, his method was different.
...

Yes, "...his method was different".
But, in the same time, that doesn't mean that his method is correct, or the others methods are incorrect or he is right and the others are wrong.

M.

But what's the point in doing research using a different method? All it proves is that their method is not effective. It doesn't signify anything more.

If I make an omelette with a new recipe and it tastes awful it doesn't mean that my original recipe is no good or that omelettes are not nice.

Ommlettes? Tastes?? Recipe??? You are on a wrong forum.

M.

Malden wrote:

L wrote:

Malden wrote:
Yes, "...his method was different".
But, in the same time, that doesn't mean that his method is correct, or the others methods are incorrect or he is right and the others are wrong.

M.

But what's the point in doing research using a different method? All it proves is that their method is not effective. It doesn't signify anything more.

If I make an omelette with a new recipe and it tastes awful it doesn't mean that my original recipe is no good or that omelettes are not nice.

Ommlettes? Tastes?? Recipe??? You are on a wrong forum.

M.

Fair enough if you don't like analogy. An unsuccessful attempt to reproduce an experiment using alternative methodology is, in this case, worthless.

As I posted before "If the phenomenon is real, those studying it should eventually reach the point where they can reliably demonstrate it and where they can teach others how to reliably demonstrate it." The longer others can not validate Zamboni's results the more suspect they become. I continue to hope that the treatment of CCSVI has some value but the more I see the results of the recent studies the less hope I have this will occur. In response to L's analogy, I would say that there are many ways to cook an egg and still get an omelet just as there has to be different methods to identify CCSVI. When a researcher's results can not be duplicated it should be raising red flags.

.

Exactly my point Lyon. Zamboni's "results" shoul be getting easier to replicate not harder. Now Zamboni is claiming that the recent results showing very little connection between CCSVI and MS are wrong because the researchers did not use HIS protocol . Red flags everywhere.

scorpion wrote:Exactly my point Lyon. Zamboni's "results" shoul be getting easier to replicate not harder. Now Zamboni is claiming that the recent results showing very little connection between CCSVI and MS are wrong because the researchers did not use HIS protocol . Red flags everywhere.

The Berlin study did not even attempt to use the same protocol though!

.

L wrote:

scorpion wrote:Exactly my point Lyon. Zamboni's "results" shoul be getting easier to replicate not harder. Now Zamboni is claiming that the recent results showing very little connection between CCSVI and MS are wrong because the researchers did not use HIS protocol . Red flags everywhere.

The Berlin study did not even attempt to use the same protocol though!

When you say Berlin study, I assume you mean the study that Scorpion linked to start this thread. (I got tripped up before, because it seems there are a couple of German studies/papers that have been done.) If that is the case, they did try to replicate Zamboni's findings using the same methods/criteria. They used similar equipment, i.e. a 7.5 MHz probe for general imaging, and a 2.5 MHz probe for transcranial analysis.

The main point of contention seems to be that they had subjects use a Valsalva maneuver during the examination for reflux. But in the study, it seems they only did this to evaluate jugular valve incompetence, a test they added in addition to Zamboni's 5 tests.

The other discrepancy mentioned was they had subjects momentarily hold their breath at the top of each inhalation, i.e. episodes of apnea. But in the paper, "The value of cerebral Doppler venous haemodynamics in the assessment of multiple sclerosis" (Zamboni, et al), Zamboni's group did exactly the same thing.

So, the German researchers did use the same protocol in trying to replicate Zamboni's ultrasound findings. Why their results are so different (from the BNAC study, as well) is anyone's guess.

patientx wrote: ...
So, the German researchers did use the same protocol in trying to replicate Zamboni's ultrasound findings. Why their results are so different (from the BNAC study, as well) is anyone's guess.

I think I have crucial answer to this question. I just have to summarise and write it, it's on the way (brain fog is clearing now).
I already have a caption:

"Big mistakes in Professor's papers"

M.