ED. NOTE: Few Orleanians are aware of the medical science available to them in their own city. They are inclined to believe that rare and delicate operations are performed only in the much publicized medical centers of the East and North. This is not true. New Orleans stands at the top in medicine and surgery, and in hospital techniques and equipment. Lee Davis, Item reporter, has surveyed this situation in a series of articles, one of which appears below.
Slow hardening of the arteries has long been the most dreaded affliction of old age.
And, until fairly recently, it has been accepted as almost as unavoidable as old age -itself.
But is it?
Here in New Orleans, important research is being-done on arteriosclerosis (the medical term for hardening of the arteries), based on the belief that it may be preventable.
The Louisiana State University medical school's pathology department has found:
- Strong evidence, from some 300 autopsies, that age itself is not the cause of the disease.
- Valuable clues to the real cause, based on experiments with dogs. These studies indicate that a high fat diet plus kidney damage can produce changes in arterial walls.
To make it more interesting, some of the LSU
findings clash head-on with other, much-publicized theories as to the cause of the disease.
The LSU research is directed by Dr. Russell Holman, head of the pathology department, who started his experiments 12 years ago at the University of South Carolina, and has continued them here for the past seven years.
