< previous page | page_4 | next page >
Page 4
| Willix wrote in 1995. "That's $4.2 billion right there, not including drugs and follow-up." |
| In 1992, the Journal of the American Medical Association found that half of the angioplasties performed in the U.S. were unnecessary and that "not a single properly randomized study supports the superior advantage, if any, of angioplasty as compared with medical therapy." |
| In response to the procedure's drawbacks, ineffectiveness, risks and adverse side effects, the American College of Cardiologists asked, "Is angioplasty being done for cardiologists or for patients?" |
| Willix warned that bypass surgery and angioplasty may soon be replaced by "laser endarterectomy" and an even riskier procedure, "atherectomy." According to two studies, one out of every 12 atherectomy patients dies within six months, during which time the arteries of nearly half of all patients close up again. |
| For most of the 20th century, physicians have insisted that there is no link between diet and heart disease, that heart disease is irreversible and incurable and that the only appropriate treatments are symptom-suppressing drugs and surgery. |
| Then Nathan Pritikin cured his heart disease with a low-fat diet, and his health centers trained thousands to do the same. Still, physicians were skeptical. It wasn't until Dean Ornish conducted a clinical trial at the University of California that the medical establishment realized that heart disease can be not only stopped but reversed and cured by changes in diet and lifestyle. Dr. Willix uses this approach and claims a 99 percent success rate with patients who have been told they need angioplasty or coronary bypass. |
< previous page | page_4 | next page >

If you like this book, buy it!