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In a radical experiment,
doctors are snaking wires inside the lungs of Asthma patients to essentially
burn off some of the tissue that blocks their ability to breathe. Called
bronchial thermoplasty, the procedure is the first attempt at a non-drug
treatment for asthma.
It's not without risk.
Irritating those super-sensitive airways can trigger wheezing, and no one knows
the long term effects. Nor does it promise a cure.
But the hose is that physically
altering spasm-prone airways might one day help thousands of patients with hard
to control asthma breathe easier.
"People still get very sick
from asthma. People still die of asthma. You'd think we'd have better control,
but it seems to be escalating rather than going down" says Michael Simoff,
interventional pulmonology chief at Detroit's Henry Ford Medical Centre, one of
17 US Hospitals, and 29 worldwide, enrolling patients in experiment.
"We have a potential here, I
think to influence a very common disease." More than 20 million Americans have
asthma, and the chronic lung disease is on the rise. While medications can be
very effective in preventing and treating asthma attacks, the disease kills
5,000 people every year and account for two million emergency-room visits. The
thermoplasty experiment targets patients who do poorly despite multiple
medications based on evidence that overgrown muscle tissue lining air tubes
inside the lungs is one of asthma's underlying causes.
(Ref : The Times of India
dated May 25, 2006)
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