Deep inside the veins of the Canadian patient lying in the modern operating room, Marcial Fallas deftly negotiates around many roadblocks on his way to unclogging blood vessels.
Watching internal pictures from X-ray and ultrasound monitors, Dr. Fallas and his five-man Costa Rican team use a thin metal wire a few feet long to guide a catheter from the entry point, a few inches inside of the patient’s left hip, to the veins in her neck.
The soft-spoken Dr. Fallas explains each step of the 90-minute procedure as Jeanette Brooks, a multiple sclerosis sufferer from Rocky Mountain House, Alta., gently snores under the sedation.
Balloons follow the catheter into the veins weaving inside Ms. Brooks’s thin neck. Several are inflated to smooth out jagged corners and widen narrowing straight-aways.
A few hours after the surgery ends, Ms. Brooks rests groggily in her immaculate, air-conditioned private room at Hospital Clínica Bíbilica, three storeys above a grungy section of downtown San José.
Blood from her brain now has a clearer path to flow back to her heart. Whether this helps her MS will be judged in the next few days and months, and will become another anecdotal piece in an intense conflict between elements of the medical establishment and patients desperate for help. The so-called liberation procedure pioneered by Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni has had its setbacks, including the death last month of Mohir Mostic, a 35-year-old Ontario patient, from complications while under Dr. Fallas’s care. In turn, Dr. Zamboni has called for more study in Canada, which has among the highest rates of MS in the world.
Meanwhile, thousands of Canadian MS patients like Ms. Brooks are quietly taking or planning trips around the globe to seek their own answers. Across the United States, from Mexico and Costa Rica to Egypt, Jordan and India, MS patients are getting their veins widened in the belief they’ve finally found a treatment that helps. The bills run high. The cost in Costa Rica falls into the middle of the international range at $12,900 (U.S.), including hotel and an unusual 10 days of recovery and therapy post-op, but not all meals or air fare.
If they can afford it, money seems to be no object for patients who have lost patience with Canada’s clampdown on the procedure.
“My neurologist doesn’t know I’m here,” said Ms. Brooks, a self-effacing mother of two, as she awaited her operation in her room. She has had difficulties grabbing small objects and walking, and loses her balance when she’s tired. “It’s like they’ve taken a stance and they all have the same talking points,” she said.
Upstairs in his office, Dr. Fallas faces questions about the procedure and concerns about complications and efficacy. Thrust into the news by the death of Mr. Mostic on Oct. 19, the vascular surgeon admits he is far less at ease in the public theatre than the surgical one. He had used a stent to brace open a vein in one of the riskier versions of the procedure pioneered by Dr. Zamboni, who has said he cannot recommend his own procedure for widespread use right now.
Neither the death, nor Dr. Zamboni’s call for caution, have deterred patients here. But the death does weigh on Dr. Fallas, a physician whose sensitive bedside manner is constantly praised by Canadian patients.
“Of course, you think about whether you should have done something differently. It’s impossible to know now, and if I start to punish myself … I try to avoid those kind of thoughts,” Dr. Fallas said.
His vascular surgery team at Hospital Clínica Bíbilica, working with a Vancouver-based medical tourism company called Passport Medical, has performed balloon angioplasty on about 300 Canadian MS patients who have come here since operations started in June.
