Thu, Jul-15-04, 20:22
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Senior Member
Posts: 2,816
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Plan: Atkins/Protein Power
Stats: 256/179/160
BF:38.9/27.2/24.3
Progress: 80%
Location: Triangle NC
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Local News: Blood Washing Offered for People with High Cholesterol
Quote:
Blood Washing Offered for People with High Cholesterol
By Angela Hampton
There is a new life-saving treatment for people with high cholesterol. It actually washes the bad cholesterol out of your blood. UNC Hospitals is the first in the state to offer the blood washing treatment. It's for people with very high levels of bad cholesterol, and in light of new cholesterol guidelines released this week, this new treatment is more important than ever.
Like millions of Americans, 66-year-old David Gordon uses a combination of drugs, diet and exercise to lower his cholesterol. "My overall cholesterol is 140. My bad is 79."
New guidelines just released suggest people at high risk of a heart attack should have a bad or LDL cholesterol level of less than 100. People at very high risk should be below 70.
To get there, the government recommends more people take cholesterol lowering drugs. But those drugs don't work for some patients.
A new treatment at UNC Hospitals does. It's called LDL Apherisis, or blood washing. Doctor Ross Simpson explains. "The blood washing treatment is a way of lowering people's cholesterol when it's dangerously high."
A patient is connected to a machine with IV needles. It pumps their blood through a special filter that removes the bad cholesterol and then returns the cleaned blood to the body. "It makes a dramatic difference in the way it drops the cholesterol. A bad cholesterol will drop say from a value of 200 to 70 or 80, even lower sometimes with one treatment."
Right now, blood washing is limited to patients with a very high level of bad cholesterol. Dr. Simpson hopes soon it will be an option for everyone. But for now, their best line of defense is still a healthy diet, exercise and medication. "I've been taking Lipitor for quite a while and I know it helps."
Right now, insurance and Medicare only cover the cost of blood washing for people with LDL levels over 200 if they have heart disease, and 300 if they don't and again, if drugs don't seem to work.
Dr. Simpson hopes that will change in light of the new guidelines just released. This is not a one-time treatment. The body keeps making the bad cholesterol, so patients get treated every 2 to 3 weeks and it takes 2 to 3 hours each time. But again, it can definitely save lives.
For more information on this technique log onto http://www.uncheartcenter.org/
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Here's a better link to UNC:
http://www.uncheartcenter.org/handl...mplate&cpid=176 |