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Chelation therapy initially began as a treatment for mercury and lead poisoning. It isn't a proven treatment for heart disease, and it can be dangerous when used as a heart disease treatment. Even so, some doctors and alternative medicine practitioners have used chelation therapy to treat heart disease and stroke. The theory behind using chelation therapy for heart disease is that the medicine used in the treatment binds to the calcium that's in fatty deposits (plaques) in your arteries. Once the medicine binds to the calcium, the plaques are swept away as the medicine moves through your bloodstream. The safety and effectiveness of chelation therapy for heart disease can't be determined, even after the results of the largest study conducted to date, the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT), sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Neither the American Heart Association nor the American College of Cardiology recommends chelation therapy as a treatment for heart disease, and the Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved chelation therapy for use as a heart disease treatment.

There is only one large study for chelation therapy, the TACT study.

TACT provides evidence that a regimen of 40 infusions of disodium EDTA modestly reduced the risk of some cardiovascular events in adults who have previously had a heart attack. This treatment effect lasted during the 5-year follow-up period and in patients that were on evidence-based medicines (or medicines known to be effective in patients with a history of heart attacks). Overall, those receiving chelation had an 18 percent reduced risk of subsequent cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, hospitalization for angina, or coronary revascularization or death from any cause. A cardiovascular event occurred in 222 (26 percent) of the chelation group and 261 (30 percent) of the placebo group. Two subgroups of participants had a greater reduction in risk for cardiovascular events. Those with diabetes had a 39 percent reduction in risk and those who had experienced a specific type of heart attack, called an anterior myocardial infarction, had a 37 percent reduction in risk. Since this is the first clinical trial to show a benefit, these results are not, by themselves, sufficient to support the routine use of chelation as post-heart attack therapy.

The study was conducted in participants who were at least 50 years of age or older, had had a heart attack at least six weeks prior to evaluation.

So neither do you fall in the study population with heart attack in the past, nor is there a very strong evidence of benefit of chelation. The therapy is not at all recommended by American college of cardiology guidelines. The study itself showed that as many as 16 percent of the study population had adverse events.

So I would not recommend it to you.

Feel free to ask queries.

Regards,

Dr Vivek Mahajan

DM Cardiology.