Madam Chair, Madam Vice-Chair, honourable members, we are here today to speak on CCSVI, chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, a serious vascular problem. I am a vascular surgeon. Thank you for the opportunity to address this subcommittee on a matter of great importance and, in my opinion, great urgency.
You have the chance to help put an end to an enormously troubling situation in which thousands of innocent victims of multiple sclerosis are condemned to deterioration of every aspect of their lives and are deprived of a simple procedure available to every other Canadian without a second thought--every Canadian, that is, who suffers from a venous anomaly of any organ other than the brain, every single Canadian except those with MS. I am here to ask you to help remove the obstacles that make it impossible for MS sufferers to obtain treatment for CCSVI and make it impossible for doctors to give treatment, even as a matter of compassion.
I am a cardiovascular surgeon. One day not long ago, my lab suddenly experienced a flood of requests for imaging to diagnose CCSVI. We were receiving and continue to receive 1,000 requests a week for this service. I found news about Dr. Zamboni's research with the diagnosis of CCSVI. We did some research. We started to do the same imaging, as requested by the physicians referring the patients. To our astonishment, we found a large number of cases that had verifiable, diagnosable abnormalities seen in the veins draining the brain and the spinal cord.
At first we found these abnormalities in about 75% of the cases. I realized that this was an abnormality I did not understand. I chose to travel to Italy. I spent several days with Dr. Zamboni and his crew. I acquired training that was required to adequately detect these abnormalities and I am now sticking to a very rigid protocol, designed by Dr. Zamboni, to diagnose CCSVI. BVI is now finding abnormalities sufficient to diagnose CCSVI in upwards of 90% of patients with MS referred to us by neurologists.
It is too early to say whether CCSVI is actually causing MS. However, it is not too early to say that the logic of such connections is very plausible and makes scientific sense. Indeed, anecdotal evidence today is very compelling.
We know that patients with MS have a buildup of iron in deep-brain tissue, an area close to draining veins. It is plausible that the compromised venous drainage causes red blood cells laden with iron to leak from the thin-walled veins into brain tissue. As the leaked red blood cells break down, iron is deposited, an immune response follows, neurological damage subsequently develops. The experience of Zamboni and Simka is that virtually all CCSVI sufferers with MS who undergo corrective angioplasty experienced some improvement in their symptoms. I have proceeded to refer six patients to treatment for angioplasty: all six have seen significant improvement, four of them dramatic.
Angioplasty is a well-known, universally practised procedure. It is not experimental. Interventional radiologists do it virtually every day. It is very low-risk. There is nothing special about venous angioplasty. The angioplasty we speak of with Dr. Zamboni is for jugular and azygous veins. It is a simple two-hour to three-hour outpatient visit done under local anesthesia with minimal risk.
I am a cardiovascular surgeon. I fix blood flow. In that sense, I'm a plumber. When I see a serious plumbing problem, I want to fix it. When I see the whole house is suffering, I want to fix the pipes. I can do that without harming the wiring in any way and do not see why we condemn the family to misery while we wait for an electrician to give his permission.
Only this past week, I had to tell a young patient whose young life is being expropriated by MS that I had found a clear obstruction in the blood flow from her brain. I could tell her that technology exists to treat this abnormality quite easily, quite cheaply, and with undue risk. But I had to tell her that this procedure is not available in Canada. She is not the only one. She is one of tens of thousands of MS patients in Canada who simply do not understand how it is possible to justify discriminating against them in this way. They are right not to understand. You should not understand.
Unless we put an end to this Kafkaesque and perfectly discriminatory situation in which we will predictably see MS sufferers seek diagnosis and treatment elsewhere, MS sufferers will litigate and a disproportionately large percentage of MS sufferers will commit suicide.
Yes, more study is needed. The recently requested $10 million for study by the MS Society is a good start, but only that. It will not help any MS sufferer in the meantime. It is fatally flawed if it does not include a treatment arm for CCSVI.
We will only learn the efficiency of treatment with CCSVI if we do the procedure. If this study is done as an excuse to do nothing while we wait for results, then it will harm MS patients. They will simply wait longer for treatment.
We cannot tell MS patients just to wait. We must keep the door open for doctors to deliver on a compassionate basis, if necessary, correction of CCSVI and MS. If universal health care is not accessible for treating patients with CCSVI and MS, then we must, as a minimum, allow these MS patients to purchase their services in Canada from qualified physicians.
Please report to the Standing Committee on Health and advise the minister that there are unconscionable and unacceptably discriminatory obstacles in the way of corrective angioplasty for CCSVI sufferers who also happen to be diagnosed with MS.
Physicians are sworn to help their patients. Please let me help mine.