Hello,

As a 36 year guy suffereing from Buerger's I'd really like to share some
information, from experience, from others and from research. Agent Orange, nor
being eldery isn't Buergers.

There seems to be alot of misunderstanding! I was really lucky that the
vascular surgeon I saw in England really knew his stuff.

Smoking causes the arteries to block up in people that smoke. Two friends of
my mum's both between 50 and 70 have blocked arteries and have been smoking all
their lives, and its a natural fact that if you smnoke it will clog up your
arteries. (both of them have never been to Vietnam!)

The blockages in their arteries are from a life time of smoking.

Buergers seems to be something different. Its a reaction to something IN
CIGARETTE SMOKE, that affects people with Buergers.

It affects people at a younger age, with a fibrous substance that blocks the
arteries, unlike that experienced by someone that has been smoking all their
lives into retirement age.

I was 35 when my foot started having problems. The specialist said it was
like a man of 70 who had been smoking for all his life. I had been smoking for
14 years. If I didn't I wouldn't have had the problems.

Buergers disease could be in anyone. It only appears in someone that smokes.

Hardening arteries can appear in anyone elderly because of their life style,
mostly cholesterol, lack of exercise etc.

Buerger disease will happen to anyone that has it, that smokes and it will
hit at a far younger age than it should.

On here there are people that have had problems in their teens and 20's
where the normal problems of smoking should not have casused any problems until
they were in their 60's or 70's

I was very lucky. My Specialist in England knew the diesase. He was a
vascualar specialist. My toe was about to go necrotic (die) and I was about to
have a bypass (40% succes rate, with a loss of my foot).

I spend 10days in hospital having a drug called Prostacyclin, it opens up
the blood vessels.

I then had a procedure where a thin wire with a tiny ballon on was run down
my entire blocked arteries all the way to my toes (painfull and tickling at the
same time, most strange) normally used for cholesterol blockages in the heart.

It saved my toe, I didn't have to have a bypass and it saved my foot and
leg.

I still have buergers diesease (i'm 36). I had a blood clot in the same leg
and spent 2 weeks in intensive care, I'm now on Warfarin Sodium (rat posion as
some call it!), maybe realted.

Buergers is a very rare disease, that people with it and smoke suffer at a
younger age, not sure of the limit, but all the research say in up to late 30's.
Maybe if someone with Buergers that started smoking later in life (DOH! :-( )
would have the same problems.

But the most important thing for someone with Buergers is to stop smoking,
as we all know. Someone recommended a book to me, 'Allen Carrs, The Easyway to
Stop Smoking'. Its helped me. Its not the best written book in the world, but
makes lots of sense. eg Stop smoking by using nicotine patches, would someone on
Herione use Heronie pathces ?

Made me more relaxed about not having a cigarette, made me realise there
were no withdrawal symptons.

This isn't a dead group, its just there is never positive information or
medical breaththroughs. No one is going going to research a disease like ours.
All we can do is stop smoking.

Rob Griffiths

(Hertfordshire England)