Posted on 11/13/2006 9:33:42 PM PST by Coleus
Blocked arteries are dangerous wherever they occur and if you get a blockage in your legs, the can cause such excruciating pain walking can be difficult. Now there's a new treatment that allows patients to grow new healthy blood vessels to improve circulation. What's hard work for most of us is the good life for Tom Reynolds. Life on the farm became difficult last year.
Tom Reynolds, 77-Years-Old: "I would have a shooting pain that would hit me in, right in my buttocks." Tom had peripheral vascular disease, where the arteries supplying blood to his legs became blocked. Left untreated, gangrene can occur.
Dr. Arshed Quyyumi, Cardiologist: "It can be pretty devastating. The options are very limited often. This is how amputations occur." Doctors told tom there was nothing they could do for him, and he had visions of life in a wheelchair. Tom Reynolds, 77-Years-Old: "It's the most depressing thing you can ever experience."
But then Tom found out about a study on a new option -- a growth factor called GMCSF. When injected into patients, it stimulates bone marrow to release stem cells -- helping the body form new arteries. Dr. Arshed Quyyumi, Cardiologist: "The implications, I think, are very exciting because one way we think that cardiovascular disease progression can be impeded and even reversed is by improving your blood vessel function."
That means fewer heart attacks, strokes, and amputations. Tom Reynolds, 77-Years-Old: "It's just like an additional life, really." Tom's enjoying his time on the farm with his son Tim and has replaced his visions of wheelchairs with a new scene. Study results showed patients' blood vessel function improved by up to 60 percent. They were also able to exercise longer without pain. Larger studies are needed before this treatment would become widely used. Doctors say this concept could potentially be applied for blocked arteries carrying blood to both the heart and the brain.
What, we don't have to murder a baby to do this, bump?
I hope not. I may need this.
Say, how successful has the "create a mountain of dead embryos to live forever" approach worked?
ur not alone.
He's not alone by a long shot!
I hope not. I may need this.
"When injected into patients, it stimulates bone marrow to release stem cells"
Your own stem cells.
:( You doing ok?
That's GMCSF spelled out in the title for a similar topic.
Do you know has there been any studies into the length of the telomeres in adult stem cells?
I wonder how stem cells are made. It would seem that regular cellular division could never do the trick.
Enter into PubMed's query box telomeres and adult stem cells. Let us know what you find. 8^)
When you lose the main arteries in your legs, it's quite problematic. Those arteries (I may have it reversed (the blood vessles headed back to the heart, possibly veins) actually have valves in them.
When standing these valves keep the blood from pooling back into the lower extremities. If you lose those arteries, the periferal arteries (veins?) expand and suppliment blood flow. They don't however have those valves, and this allows swelling if a person stands too long or exercises too much.
When this takes place about the only think you can do is lay down and wait for the blood to flow out of your legs.
Compression hose helps. It does not compensate completely.
Swelling can cause sores. Once those sores errupt, they can become nearly impossible to heal. Consider a sore on the inside of your ankle. A sore the size of a pinhead forms. You cover it and it heals during the day. Even then it may be rubbed raw by shoes. In the evening you pull of your socks, and the scab often comes with them. At night your bed clothes can disturb the scab. Then you get up in the morning and shower. The scab disolves and gets bigger. A pinhead scab can go from that size to the size of a quarter in about a week.
In certain instances a person will have to take off work for upwards of a month just to get the wound to heal.
What would be nice, is if they could find a way to generate a new artery (vein?) with valves. Otherwise the increased flow could help, but would not be the ultimate fix.
ping
I'm a candidate too, notably in my LLE. Unlike Mr. Reynolds, when I get a shooting pain in my buttocks, it's not venostasis disease, it's liberals.
Yes, but after one open heart surgery already, that worked quite well thank you, one can never tell. And research into this area is very promising, especially for the geriatric crowd. LOL
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