The program followed Italian vascular surgeon Paolo Zamboni as he expanded the neck veins of individuals with MS (sometimes stenting the veins to keep them open), and declared these people free of MS symptoms. He claimed that a condition he called CCSVI, which stands for chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, was the cause of multiple sclerosis, and that the angioplasty procedure he was performing was the treatment. I was a hopeful skeptic of the procedure from the start. That skepticism earned me not a few vocal detractors over the years, but I could never get my head around the science of the thing. No matter what angle I looked at the idea from, it just didn’t make sense.
Zamboni’s Own Research Fails to Show Efficacy
The final nail may have placed into the CCSVI-liberation treatment coffin last week, and it was placed there by Dr. Zamboni himself, when a clinical trial in which he participated, published online in November 2017 in Jama Neurology, concluded that venous angioplasty, as prescribed by Zamboni, was a largely ineffective technique and cannot be recommended to patients with MS. The study included 115 people with relapsing-remitting MS, 76 of whom received the real treatment and 39 of whom received a sham treatment. While none of the study participants experienced adverse effects, the treatment was not shown to be effective at improving patients’ physical functioning or reducing the number of new lesions seen on MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) 12 months after the procedure. It is a sad day for the thousands of people who depleted their savings, borrowed and raised funds, and traveled to clinics internationally seeking liberation treatment. It’s particularly sad for those who suffered complications and sometimes irreversible damage from the treatment. And some people may have even died as a result of having it.
Social Media Fueled Interest in Unproven Therapy
I believe that sociologists and medical ethicists will study the CCSVI controversy for decades to come. It came at a unique time when “old” media and social media traded places with regards to where people were getting their news. It came at a time — the first time — when what a relatively few people saw on television one night in Canada was transmitted to and by excited MS patients around the world. Science does not move at the speed of modern social media, and that will be difficult for many to accept for a good long time, I’d suspect. While there will always be those who believe the treatment worked for them and that it was “the system” that put down the methodology, in the end, it was good science prevailing over bad.
Time to Look Elsewhere for an MS Cure
I thought I’d written my final blog about CCSVI a number of years ago when a preponderance of evidence was building against the theory. Now that the founder of the theory has taken to persuading people with MS not to pursue liberation therapy, I believe this will be my final word on the topic. Now, on to the next step in our journey to a cure. Wishing you and your family the best of health. Cheers, Trevis
