Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you very much for having me back. I really appreciate the opportunity.
I would like to point out that Rebecca Cooney is back with us today, and this time she walked in without a wheelchair. She had her venoplasty done in Albany, in the United States, a little over a week ago, and she's doing just great.
[Applause]
My goal today is to actually show you images of jugular veins in people who have CCSVI. The abnormalities that we see are real. You don't need to be a physician to see them. Correction sometimes makes a difference in the lifestyle of these people. I believe the problem they have is easily treatable, safely treatable, treatable at low cost and at low risk to the patient. I don't believe that people should be forced, as Rebecca Cooney was, to travel to the United States, Poland, or anywhere else in the world to have it done at significant expense, when they can have it done at home at much less cost.
I'd like to show you some images we made in Barrie of two patients who have waived their rights to patient confidentiality. They are Lianne and Steven. We're going to show you the images. This takes a minute to load, and I apologize for that. The other ones have a little bit of English on them, and these have nothing on them.
This was the venogram that was done in Barrie on Lianne's left neck vein. As soon as it's loaded, I'll show you. I also have images of Steve Garvie, and these images are equally as dramatic. This is dye being injected into the left internal jugular vein. At the bottom portion, where the catheter takes critical angle from going up in the chest in this direction, the left internal jugular vein meets the brachiocephalic vein. At that point, flow is abnormal compared to what one normally sees. At that point we put a balloon inside the vessel, and we stretch up the vessel with the balloon. Once we've done that you get a different image, and it looks a bit like this.
The net effect is we can change the function of the vein. This is going to be the appearance of the azygos vein, which is a different vein inside the chest. What it does is it functionally returns the vein from being a very abnormal structure to being a normal structure.
This is the actual procedure being done. It's a balloon inside the junction of where the vessel is abnormal. This balloon is dilated to 10 millimetres. We subsequently dilated the vein to 14 millimetres.
What you need to understand is the volume of blood going through the vein. This looks like it's a little bit bigger than it was before. Before, if you assume the vein was measured at 2 millimetres, then if we dilate it to 10 millimetres, we have 25 times as much flow in a 10-millimetre vein as we do in a 2-millimetre vein. That's simply math. The net effect is, this was done, and she'll speak to her results herself.
We're just going to put up Mr. Garvie's as well, and it will take a second to load. I must apologize for that, because the other one has some English on it, and we don't want to offend anyone.
The results are actually going to speak for themselves. I think Lianne's results will certainly speak for themselves.
Some people have actually expressed some angst or some fear about having the procedure done. I think if the question were asked of me, if I would have the procedure done and if I have significant confidence in it being done, I would defer that to my interventional radiologist, Chris Guest, who spoke on W5. On W5 he was asked that very specific question. His answer was in essence that the procedure is done at very low risk, and he would have no qualms himself about having the procedure done. That comes from the guy who actually does the procedure. I don't do the procedure; it's done by an interventional radiologist.
I'd really like to take time to show you the images of Mr. Garvie, because the images of Mr. Garvie are even more dramatic than the images of Lianne.