Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Getting the Best Value in Heart Surgeries

The Blade in Toledo congratulated the Cleveland Clinic in its editorial pages for signing an agreement with Lowe’s to do all of their employees’ heart surgeries with transportation costs thrown in and deductibles waived. The Clinic performed a record 4,128 such surgeries last year, and their complication rate is lower than the national average. This is probably better than sending patients to India for their cardiac surgery, but how about the idea of reducing the need for surgeries? With lifestyle changes and EDTA chelation therapy, we showed that the need for surgical intervention, and the incidence of heart attacks and premature deaths was much lower in patients treated with this non-surgical approach, and the much larger TACT trial is ongoing to confirm these findings.

See The Blade, February 19, 2010, p. 6 and Chappell LT, Shukla R, Yang J, Blaha R, et al. Subsequent cardiac and stroke events in patients with known vascular disease treated with EDTA chelation therapy: a retrospective study(click here). Evid Based Integrative Med 2005;2:27-35.

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