Unclogging your arteries with collagenase

If you’ve ever used Drano, you know it’s a pretty simple fix. You pour it down the sink, wait, and then flush with hot water. Voila! Problem solved. If only heart surgery were so simple. Oh, wait, at Sunnybrook’s Schulich Heart Centre it is…

Hundreds of thousands of people have a concrete-like build up in their arteries that nothing can pass through, not even the thin guide wires used to insert artery-opening stents. That leaves two pretty dismal options: live with terrible side effects, like not being able to walk up a flight of stairs, or have much more serious bypass surgery. Dr. Bradley Strauss, the new Chief of the Schulich Heart Centre, has been developing an easier solution for over a decade. Now, in a world first, he’s testing this incredible approach at Sunnybrook.

Dr. Strauss’ Drano-like brainchild is called collagenase, a substance that is injected into the blockage and allowed to sit, softening the build up enough to allow stenting the next day. Collagenase has been tested on 18 patients so far at Sunnybrook, with a nearly 85% success rate. In a candid interview following the latest surgery, Dr. Strauss was, admittedly, thrilled. After first seeing the effects of collagenase at work during initial trials, he was so taken aback he needed to get some fresh air. “I was so excited that I had to leave the hospital and go for a walk, thinking did I just see something so rare? In your life, if you do lots of research which I’ve spent doing, you’re fortunate if you have one idea in your lifetime that may make a difference. That first moment when you see something that wouldn’t happen without what you did, it’s pretty humbling. And every time I do it now, I feel the same way. It’s humbling.”

It’s also life changing for patients like John Balkwill. At 48, this father and husband could barely muster up the energy to walk across the room. His most recent decade had been riddled with multiple surgeries, minor heart attacks and constant pain from severely blocked arteries. John was running out of options, until he was enrolled as patient number 18 in the collagenase trial at Sunnybrook. Before the surgery, he was hopeful. His first wish, if all went well, was to go for a walk without pain. Barely two days later, he was packing his bags and doing just that. “I went through the whole night without pain for the first time. I haven’t been able to accomplish that in over a year. So it’s a new step every day now.”

On the Drano website, they write “don’t let a tough clog upset your schedule and ruin your day.” How appropriate. Good thing there’s now a medical approach to keep your “drains” and life running smoothly. Dr. Strauss hopes that within a year, centres around the world will be unclogging the arteries of their hard to treat patients with this drug. Call it a breakthrough that really breaks through…

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