March 2010 - Space Coast Runners

THE PASSING LANE
With Ron Hoar
More Health Issues and Options for Us Aging Runners
It’s not my intention to make this column a regular medical primer but I did want to pass along some additional
medical information that came to me as a complete surprise—a procedure I had never heard of before.
After reading of my AV block, a local legend of running, Henry Campbell, alerted me to a treatment that he
received several years ago—a procedure that he discovered through his own research.
Henry was sprinting to the finish of a 4-mile training run a few years ago when he had a severe angina attack.
The cardiologist was almost adamant that he have an operation. But Henry resisted and opted for a
non-invasive treatment called EECP (Enhanced External CounterPulsion).
EECP is an outpatient treatment for angina and heart failure. Treatments are about an hour a day, five days
a week, for a total of 35 hours. You lie on a table with large blood pressure-like cuffs wrapped around your
legs and buttocks. The cuffs inflate and deflate at specific times between your heart beats. A continuous
EKG is used to set the timing so that the cuffs inflate just after a heartbeat while the heart is at rest. They
then deflate just before the next heart beat.
Henry provides a user friendly-description of what happens. He says “The sequence milks the blood back up
the leg causing a back pressure on the arteries around the heart which assists the body in opening up the
capillaries around the obstruction.”
The claimed benefits, in addition to it being non invasive, are that no recovery period is needed and the patient
realizes more energy and a better quality of life.
This is not a new concept—it was used by doctors in Pittsburgh about 60 years ago and prior to that was
used extensively in China and India.
There is an international EECP Patient Registry that collects data on the safety, effectiveness and long-term
benefits of EECP therapy. That data suggests that the benefits can last at least three years and often five or
more years. Henry Campbell reports that he has had no reoccurrence in eight years.
Last fall at the European Society Cardiology Congress there were several reports on studies of the effectiveness
of EECP. Among the reports presented, researchers at the Charite Hospital at the University of Berlin
concluded that “EECP treatment promotes recruitment of new arteries”.
In another presentation, Dr. Lawrence Crawford, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology,
Duke University School of Medicine said “published scientific data…on the effects of EECP therapy
makes a very strong argument for the use of enhanced external counterpulsation therapy in treating stable
angina and compensated heart failure patients.”
Of course, as with any medical condition, the treatment needs to be selected for the individual circumstance.
So EECP may not be for everyone and should be carefully considered in consultation with medical experts.
My point is that there are procedures and therapies that most of us are not aware of and we need to become
self educated when it comes to health issues. That is much easier to do today with the vast internet resources
available. Your research should supplement and help educate but not substitute for medical expert consultation.
Sooner or later each of us will face medical issues even as we subscribe to a running lifestyle that delays
the inevitable.
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