Nov. 08, 2004 - 21:39 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Sometime Maybe

The miracles of modern medical and surgical science are outstanding and of great use to mankind. I think perhaps this warrants that type of enthusiasm.

There is an article in todays Rocky Mountain News by Marilynn Marchione of the Associated Press, in part:

Stocking put over heart aids patients, study finds

"NEW ORLEANS -- Panty hose for the heart ?"

"A polyester mesh stocking pulled up over the wide bottom of a weak heart can help it pump better and even shrink back to a more normal size, a study has found."

About 150 heart failure patients who got this novel and incredibly simple device felt better, were less likely to need heart transplants or other operations, and improve in other ways when compared with people who did not get the fabric wrap."

"There was a 75 percent overall improvement. It is a sort of break-through technology," said Dr. Douglas Mann, the Baylor College of Medicine cardiologist who led the study and reported results Sunday at an American Heart Association conference." "This does more than any existing therapy that's out there today, he said."

"The heart wrap is still experimental, but its maker, Acorn Cardiovascular Inc. of St. Paul, Minn., already has approval to sell it in Europe and will seek the same from the federal Food and Drug Administration early next year."

The stretchy mesh device looks like fishnet hose but acts like support stockings and requires no batteries or moving parts. Once placed around the heart through an incision in the chest, the mesh sticks to it and becomes a permanent implant."

"Heart failure occurs when the heart is weak or damaged and cannot pump effectively. It enlarges to accommodate the extra blood, and fluid can back up into thelungs, leaving people short of breath and tired all the time. Patients usually grow progressively weaker, and most live only about five years after diagnosis."

"We think this stabilizes the disease process" by relieving the pressure on the heart and giving it support so it can rest between beats," Mann said."

Researchers also measured changes in the heart's shape and size and found dramatic differences with the stocking. "These big hearts, with this device, became small hearts," and went from a basketball shape to the more natural football shape that lets them beat as they should," Mann said.

"If this was just taking a size 8 person and putting them in a size 4 dress, you'd say, 'Of course you've made the heart smaller,'" Kubo said, "We know from pre-clinical studies that the mass of the heart is reduced. this is not just a scrunching effect, a corset effect."

"Dr. Raymond Gibbons, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, praised how the sudy was done. "Some of the enthusiasm for other devices was based on studies without a great deal of scientific rigor," he said."

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There are good things happening in our world every day, seldom do they make the front page.

This one didn't.

Being a person with congestive heart failure, this article was of great interest to me. There is actual hope that people in my condition will soon be able to live much more lively, happy lives.

I have, fortunately passed the five year mark. That is one plus for me. But even on oxygen, when I exert myself more than normally, I get out of breath. And the fatigue is with me all the time.

Not -- poor me -- I'm just hoping that the corporations and companies do not cut out health care for their retirees as they are talking of doing. Or for that matter put their employees in a bind to the point that they can't afford the health care they are now getting.

In the far future help will come for us peons Sometime Maybe . . . . . . . .

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