RE: Study Finds Radiation Curbs Artery Re-Cloggi

["Poston, Jay (John) (HOU)" <jposton@guidant.com>]

FYI,

Dr. Waksman is one of the investigators working with the Guidant P-32 source
wire.  Since P-32 is a pure beta emitter, the dose to Cath. Lab personnel
during this procedure are minimal.

J. W. Poston, Jr.
Guidant Corporation
Vascular Intervention Group
8934 Kirby Drive
Houston, TX  77054
Voice:	713-218-9231

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Sandy Perle [SMTP:sandyfl@earthlink.net]
	Sent:	Tuesday, November 10, 1998 11:32 AM
	To:	Multiple recipients of list
	Subject:	Study Finds Radiation Curbs Artery Re-Cloggi

	Add this tidbit to the "positive" benefits of radiation in the
medical 
	world:

	Tuesday November 10 7:16 AM ET 

	DALLAS (Reuters) - Radiation seems to be a surprisingly simple 
	way to prevent the re-clogging of arteries after damaged human 
	blood vessels are reinforced with special tubes, the American Heart 
	Association was told Monday.  

	Dr. Ron Waksman, a researcher at the Washington Hospital 
	Center in Washington, D.C., said his studies found that radiation 
	helps prop up these reinforced blood vessels, cutting by more than 
	half the incidence of re-clogging.  

	``We saw dramatic results... which we feel is a breakthrough,'' 
	Waksman reported to the heart association at its annual meeting 
	in Dallas.  

	He said one-fourth of the perhaps 500,000 stents -- mesh-like 
	scaffolding tubes -- placed in coronary arteries of U.S. patients
	each year quickly become clogged by scar tissue.

	He explained that the action re-blocks blood flow to the heart, 
	robbing patients of strength and endangering their lives.

	Stents are often placed in damaged arteries during a procedure 
	called angioplasty, during which surgeons stretch open blocked 
	blood vessels by threading through them an inflated balloon 
	attached to a catheter.  

	``About 25 percent of stents will re-clog and half these patients
are 
	'frequent fliers,''' Waksman said, referring to the group whose
stents 
	begin clogging within months and continue to re-clog following 
	repeat angioplasties to re-open them.  

	``I've had patients whose stents have clogged so often they've had 
	to receive seven angioplasties in two years,'' he said. ``It's a
	chronic disease that destroys their quality of life and previously 
	they've had no treatment that's been able to help them.''

	Waksman said he conducted a study of 130 patients with clogged 
	stents. He said half received radiation following angioplasties to 
	reopen arteries, while the other half received a placebo.  

	The researcher said he found that six months later that 61 percent 
	fewer patients on radiation were experiencing re-clogging than 
	those on a placebo.  

	What's more, he said, patients undergoing the radiation therapy 
	had a 63 percent reduced incidence of death, heart attack or other 
	adverse events.  

	``I'm not aware of any trial to reduce restinosis (re- clogging of 
	arteries) that comes even close to this trial,'' Waksman said.

	He said that although anti-platelet and ``clot-buster'' drugs save 
	lives of heart attack patients, the medicines have little, if no
	ability to prevent re-clogging of arteries.

	He said stents scrape the inside of their host arteries, creating a 
	wound that the body repairs by recruiting clotting cells that form 
	troublesome scar tissue that clogs the artery.  

	Radiation apparently works, he explained, by arresting the wound-
	healing process and somehow slightly widening the size of the 
	artery.  

	Waksman said he does not believe that the radiation -- the 
	equivalent of two chest X-rays -- will increase the patients' risk
of 
	cancer.  

	``The radiation is pretty much confined to the coronary artery
itself, 
	which is not very vulnerable to cancer,'' he noted.

	Sandy Perle
	E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
	Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

	"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
	the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
	              - G. K. Chesterton -
	
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