Ernest Neuman lies quietly, smiling, as his air-compressed pants suit pulsates in rhythm with his heart, forcing blood up from his legs back toward his ailing heart.
He is convinced treatments with the mysterious, Chinese-inspired device have cured his continuous heart pain - in only a week.The strange device's rhythmic chug, chug, chug sounds like an old-fashioned washing machine. Neu-man's body jolts with every chug. It makes his speech a little halting.
"It's . . . like riding . . . a rocking horse," he said.
Neuman, 77, a patient of Donald H. Schmidt, medical director of the Milwaukee Heart Institute at Sinai Samaritan Medical Center, suffered chest pain (angina) so severe that he could not walk from his home to his car without stopping to rest. The pain is caused by inadequate blood flow to the heart muscle.
"I couldn't even watch something exciting on television" without chest pain, he said. He was virtually confined to his home and a life of almost total inactivity.
"Now, I walk the treadmill. My wife, Donna, and I go out. I haven't taken nitro (nitroglycerin tablets) in a week," he said during his hourlong treatment Wednesday at the heart institute.
Neuman has undergone six treatments of a scheduled 35. He said he noticed a difference in the way his heart felt after his first treatment.
"I don't know how it works," admitted Schmidt, who is the first in Wisconsin to use the device, called an EECP for Enhanced External CounterPulsation.
Synchronized with the heartbeat, the blood pressure-like cuffs in the pants, powered by an air compressor, instantly compress and then relax at the calves, thighs and buttocks after each heartbeat, Schmidt said.
The compression action forces blood pressure higher during the resting phase in the heart's rhythm than it is during the normally higher pumping phase, Schmidt said.
It is that back pressure, Schmidt said, that is thought to benefit the patient by forcing blood into tissues of the heart through tiny vessels called collaterals.
Schmidt said the procedure also may stimulate the heart to grow more collaterals. He said the treatment has been used in China for years but has not caught on here. Small patient studies in the United States showed an elimination of heart pain in 90 percent of patients, he said. Research subjects followed for three years had no return of angina after a course of treatment.
There is no fee for the procedure now, but the recommended charge will be $7,000 for 35 hourlong sessions, said Jim Gerard, whose Waukesha, Wis., business is handling sales of the device in the Midwest. The machine is partially made in China and is sold through Vasomedical Inc., of Westbury, N.Y. The device costs about $200,000.
"Dr. Schmidt had told me there was nothing more he could do for me," said Neuman, who has had a heart attack, two bypass surgeries and multiple angioplasties.
Schmidt said Neuman's response could only be the placebo effect, that is, the treatment seems effective because patients believe in it and feel better.
"It is too early to give a definitive answer, but it seems to work," Schmidt said.