A Canadian medical researcher is pioneering a radical new treatment that they hope will burn off the tissue that prevents asthmatics from breathing.
Called bronchial thermoplasty, the researchers are snaking wires inside the lungs of asthma patients in what is believed to be the first non-drug treatment for asthma.
Patients cough and wheeze for a few days, said Dr. Gerard Cox of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., who reported the study results in the latest issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Cox said most patients in his study breathed a little bit easier and had more symptom-free days after treatment.
His results were confirmed by a second study, in the United States.
Asthma is a serious lung disease that makes it difficult for patients to breathe properly. There are ways to treat it, but none have proved wholly successful. The disease still kills an estimated 5,000 people in the United States every year and accounts for two million emergency-room visits.
"People still get very sick from asthma," said Dr. Michael Simoff, a lung specialist at Detroit's Henry Ford Medical Center, one of 18 U.S. hospitals and 30 worldwide that are experimenting with the new technique. "People still die of asthma. You'd think we'd have better control, but it seems to be escalating rather than going down."
The thermoplasty technique works on the assumption that overgrown muscle tissue inside the lungs causes asthma. When something irritates the lungs, the muscle contracts, narrows air passages and leaves patients gasping.
Bronchial thermoplasty promises to get rid of the thickened muscle. Doctors thread a wire through the nose or throat and into the branch-like airways that fill the lungs. A wire basket at the tip of the wire touches the airway walls and burns off the tissue using radio waves.
Simoff compares the technique to a microwave oven, which cooks meat without scorching the outer skin like a grill would.
The procedure won't replace asthma medications, said Dr. Rand Sutherland of Denver's National Jewish Research and Medical Center.
But he's testing it because too many patients run out of options.