How to Survive and Thrive After Any Surgery — Even Heart Surgery

If you ever have to undergo major heart surgery, your risk for serious complications is quite high. Not only does it increase your risk of dying from the surgery, but it also increases your risk of developing serious kidney disease and other problems.

But you can avoid all of this.

Unfortunately, though, conventional medicine isn’t doing anything to promote the use of this therapy that could save your life.

I’m hoping some recent research will change that.

Several recent articles point out how unfair it is that so many Americans do not have adequate access to this incredible treatment.

The first part of this report comes to you from two articles recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The articles both describe how common it is for patients undergoing major vascular surgical procedures (such as bypass surgery) to develop kidney disease. In addition, besides the damage to their kidneys, the same patients also died more often from their cardiovascular disease and from cancer than those who did not have the complications.

Scientists at the University of Florida in Gainesville looked at what happened to 3,646 men and women who underwent vascular surgery between January 2000 and November 2010. They were specifically looking to see how many of them developed acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease, and long-term cardiovascular mortality from the procedure. An amazing 49% developed acute kidney injury. Almost half of them! Another 14% developed chronic kidney disease. And an astounding 54% of these patients ended up dying from their cardiovascular disease at a faster rate than those who did not have any of these complications. And that’s not all.

An additional 11% ended up dying from cancer. These risks basically doubled the chance of dying within 10 years of the time of surgery in all of the patients who had kidney complications. Let’s put this into perspective. More than 200,000 bypass surgeries are done every year in the United States. So, if there was a way of preventing these common kidney complications, we would be able to significantly improve the lifespan and quality of life of close to 100,000 patients every year! And here’s the good news. There is a way.

Drs. Christian de Virgilio and Dennis Yong Kim of the Harbor UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California pointed out the way in their commentary on the study. According to them, the results of the study should prompt an immediate call to action in order to prevent the problems. They go on to say that “Perhaps even more exciting [than early diagnosis] is the application of preoperative therapeutic interventions such as remote ischemic preconditioning, which in a recent trial was associated with a significantly reduced rate of acute kidney injury following cardiac surgery.” Wait a second. Where have I heard that “preconditioning” term before? Oh yes. Now I remember. I have been reporting on the preconditioning power of ozone therapy for several years now.

Preconditioning refers to treating the patient for several weeks before surgery in order to improve his overall health and prevent complications. Patients who are preconditioned with ozone therapy heal faster and have fewer complications (if any). Take cardiovascular surgery for example. The authors of a recent study on ozone preconditioning start off their report by stating that, “Several studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of ozone oxidative preconditioning.” But what about heart injury after heart surgery?

To test that, they divided a group of rats into two groups. They preconditioned the first group with ozone. They preconditioned the second group with a placebo. Then they subjected all the rats to cardiac ischemic reperfusion injury. This is the same kind of injury that can happen to patients who have heart attacks and who undergo bypass surgery. They discovered that the animals pretreated with ozone therapy had significantly less heart damage, less oxidative stress, and less lactic acid accumulation than those who got the placebo. They concluded that, “Ozone therapy can afford significant cardioprotection against biochemical and histological [microscopic] changes associated with ischemic reperfusion injury.” But that’s not all.

Is there any information that ozone preconditioning will specifically help prevent the kidney disease that the authors of the AMA study reported on? The answer is yes. The authors of a brand new study just published last summer looked precisely at this question. They took a group of New Zealand white rabbits and subjected their kidneys to ischemic reperfusion injury. This is the same type of injury to the kidneys that patients get from the cardiovascular surgeries mentioned earlier. Some of the lucky rabbits were preconditioned with ozone therapy and some weren’t. Here’s what happened.

The animals preconditioned with ozone therapy had significantly fewer biological indicators of oxidative stress and inflammation. This is critical because it’s oxidative stress and inflammation that causes the damage to kidneys after cardiovascular surgery. When they looked at the kidneys through a microscope to see how much damage they sustained from the injury, the results were equally amazing. The amount of damage in the kidneys of the animals who were preconditioned with ozone was 65% less. Here’s the amazing conclusion that these authors came to after this experiment.

“Ozone preconditioning is effective in reducing tissue damage induced in kidney ischemic reperfusion injury. The protective effect of ozone therapy is mediated via reducing inflammatory response and regulating of reactive oxygen species [oxidative stress]. Renal histology [microscopic findings] also showed convincing evidence regarding ozone’s protective nature against kidney injury induced by ischemic reperfusion. Consequently, ozone therapy might be helpful in protecting the kidneys from ischemic reperfusion induced damage in humans, probably through the anti-inflammatory effect and reducing the total oxidant status.” This is exactly what the good docs from Harbor UCLA Medical Center are looking for. Hopefully they will learn about it soon.

So here’s the message. One, if you need cardiovascular surgery (or any other major surgery for that matter), be sure to get ozone preconditioning therapy from one of the many doctors trained in it. I use what is called major auto-hemotherapy (MAH) twice a week for three weeks leading right up to four days before the surgery. You're far more likely to breeze through your procedure and avoid almost all of the possible complications if you’ve had preconditioning. You can find doctors fully trained in MAH at the website for the American Academy of Ozonotherapy, www.aaot.us. But here’s an even better plan.

As I have said before, get your own ozone machine and precondition yourself right now. I’ve given you all the details in the last year. So if you missed it, go back into the archives and read about it. This information is vital for all of us. I like home preconditioning especially because you don’t always know when you’re going to need to be preconditioned. Many surgeries are done on an emergency basis and can’t be delayed for preconditioning. So it’s best to always be ready. I treat myself at home two to three times every week of my life. I hope I never need it, but if I do, I’m ready.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD