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Why
is this trial different? |
| Why doesn’t the NHS pay for this study? | It is beyond the remit of resources of NHS funding. |
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| Where do the stem cells come from? | Taken from the patients’ own bone marrow in a simple procedure. | |
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| Why use adult stem cells, not embryonic? | Studies suggest that adult stem cells may repair damaged hearts and do not have the technical and ethical issues of embryonic stem cells. | |
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| How long until this becomes an accepted treatment? | Our studies will run over 5 years to determine whether adult stem cells can be used as a treatment. |
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| What type of patients are accepted for these trials? | People with damaged hearts who have been told that there are no more treatment options available to them but that are still symptomatic. |
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| Why is this trial different? | It is the first large randomised controlled study that considers everyday patients. It is also designed to answer questions that other smaller studies have raised. | |
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| What are the ultimate aims of the study? | To establish whether adult stem cells can help patients with damaged hearts to recover their quality of life and if so ensure that this treatment can be applied nationally. | |
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| A Patient's perspective |
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| Dear Ian, My name is Chris McNamara and i live in Sweden. The reason i'm contacting you is to thank you for all the work you have done with promoting stem cell therapy.My father has just returned from frankfurt where he has recieved his second insertion of stem cells. My father lives in Ireland and he was on his last legs when i saw on sky tv your interview on stem cell therapy.It was from that moment my father had hope. He is on his second treatment now and i can tell you that he is a new man. He can walk swim and do some light duties without any problems and he has a new lease of life .Before the treatment he could hardly breath and it was very hard to walk a short distance without resting so again thank you Ian. |
In frankfurt we also bumped into a Jay Simon from florida and he was having his first treatment and it was he who gave me your email address (I hope he gets good results) he is a very nice guy. Before we went to frankfurt my father visited his cardiac specialist in Ireland for an opinion on stem cell therapy and he recieved a very negative response from him. He told my father and i quote "I would not recommend stem cell therapy for my own father" well you can imagine what went through my fathers head at the time. Well i'm glad we did'nt listen to that advice. I think here lies a very big problem. When a cardiac specialist is giving this type of opinion to his patients without proper education in stem cell therapy it has the |
potiential to do a lot of damage to
the research. I wish there was something we could do to further educate
cardiac specialists in rural areas so as to prevent them from giving an
un-educated opinion to his patients and maybe help them to understand fully
the enormous value in modern medical treatments. I really do think this
is a huge problem for the research teams who are doing their very best to
save lives...I look forward to your view on this problem and a very big
thank you once again for the great work you are doing. |
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| Registered Charity No. 1101727 | An appeal for Barts and The London NHS Trust - bringing excellence to life. |