Possible ultrasound treatment for resistant high blood pressure
The results of a new study released Tuesday in the journal JAMA Cardiology showed that the device routinely reduced daytime ambulatory blood pressure by an average of 8.5 points among middle-aged people with hypertension.
Researchers at Columbia University in New York and University of Paris tested the device used in outpatient procedures called ultrasound renal denervation. It has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use outside of clinical trials.
“Many patients in our clinical practice are just like the patients in our study, with uncontrolled blood pressure in the 150s despite some efforts,” Dr. Ajay Kirtane, professor of medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and co-leader of the study, said in a statement…
Ultrasound therapy has proven effective in calming overactive nerves in the renal artery, disrupting signals that lead to hypertension. The therapy is delivered to the nerves by a thin catheter that is inserted into a vein in the leg or wrist and threaded to the kidney.
A lot of people have hypertension, and a lot of people with hypertension have a form that is at least somewhat drug-resistant and persists even in the face of exercise and weight loss (perhaps 20%). You can read more about it here. Also see this.
We have to be skeptical about consensus opinion by the medical community. An analogous case to blood pressure is cholesterol level. The received wisdom is that lower is better but see the graph at this tweet. It summarizes results of a study with about 13 million people. There’s an optimal level around 200 to 220. A cholesterol level below 150 is more dangerous than a cholesterol level of 300.
Interventions such as this ultrasound ablation with otherwise healthy people need to be particularly justified.
https://twitter.com/Mangan150/status/1615052172852592641?s=20
Bob Wilson, it seems clear that a persistent BP of 150 or more is a problem. the arguments about cholesterol and appropriate levels are not the same thing — although I agree that this is an open question.
Folks interested in lowering and regulating BP without medical interventions may find recent books by James Nestor, Patrick McKeown, and Eddie Stern to be helpful.
Kate, the question we have to ask ourselves is how do the dangers from high blood pressure compare to the possible side effects and problems with the laser surgery? There are very few if any “silver bullets” that fix a medical problem without causing other problems. Surgery on a complex organ like a kidney seems particularly problematic to me. It certainly should not be tried before some of the methods in the books recommended by Walt are exhausted. For a skeptical view of modern medicine see the book Medical Nihilism by Jacob Stegenga.
Bob, this is no surgery on a kidney. A thin wire is inserted into one of the blood vessels leading to the kidneys, not the kidneys themselves.
It’s a well known and frequently performed procedure, though in a different area of the body from where it is currently usually done (pacemakers work in much the same way, so do some hearing aparatus).
I do wonder why it’s supposed to work though, is it by stimulating the kidneys into producing more urine, thus reducing the amount of fluids in the body?
That’d work for some people, but not for everyone and has the very real possibility of the device being abused by those jumping onto it as a weight loss machine, with dehydration and all its associated problems as a result in those people, on top of the anorexia and other health problems they already suffer from.
But that’s on those people, not the device. It’s no different from these people abusing diuretics and medication like semaglutide obtained on the black market.