Interview with Lew Chapman: MS Patient who had Endovascular Surgery to Treat Symptoms

In my previous post I introduced the theory of a researcher named Doctor Zamboni who believes that the Multiple Sclerosis is not primarily an autoimmune disease but a vascular one.  The theory that Multiple Sclerosis has a vascular cause is called Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency which is abbreviated to CCSVI.  Basically the theory is that the neurological damage one sees with Multiple Sclerosis is really caused by blockages in the veins of MS patients. 

You might want to read my introductory post on this topic and review the links to get a better understanding of this theory and the research it is based upon.

As promised, today I am going to be posting my interviews with two of the people who have undergone endovascular surgery in the hopes that it would help relieve their MS symptoms.

You may read the interview of MS patient, Mark Miller here.

I now present Lew Chapman who has graciously volunteered to be interviewed about his experience before and after his surgery.

How did you first find out about CCSVI? 

I first found out about CCSVI on an internet forum/support group called ThisIsMS.com (spinal tap parody!).  It's a place where folks with MS go that don't want to be on a website sponsored by a pharmaceutical company.  They don't delete posts that are talking about things like this or that are critical of that companies' product.

What scientific proof is there that MS could be considered a vascular disease as opposed to an autoimmune disease? 

I must admit to you that it's in its infancy.  However, there are a ton of reference materials, including the pioneer of this technique's paper written as an evaluation of the many patients he has treated.  Here are some links:  Zamboni et al 2007 Intracranial Venous haemodynamics in MS,  Zamboni et al 2009 The value of cerebral doppler haemodynamics in the assessment of ms, Zamboni et al Dec 2008 "Chronic cerebrospinal venous insifficiency in patients with multiple sclerosis"  

The third link there is the main paper.  He is "rolling out" this research at a big conference in Bolgna, Italy on September 8^th, and I'm quite sure the news will be ground shaking.   We have one of our forum members going to that conference.  There are so many papers and references backing this theory up that it's not even funny.  Here is also a link to a "layman's terms" document that really is the one that swayed me.  Not having a medical education, there is a vocabulary ignorance I'm dealing with.  I simply don't know the meaning of lots of the molecular and cellular things that they are talking about.  Here is the link to that document

That is the one that convinced me; especially the stuff about congestive venous myelopathy.  Another very important ‘convincing' agent for me was the creation of this foundation and its mission.