Fibromuscular Dysplasia's Patient Registry Good For Research, But Is It Good For Patients' Quality of Life?

Fibromusclar dysplasia patients learned that principal investigator, Dr. Jeffrey Olin of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, would be presenting initial findings from the FMD patient registry at the International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy mere hours before his talk. Not that it mattered much. Patients weren't part of the ISET program. We didn't get to hear what Olin said. We—the people in the study—got a news release. Or at least there was a release put out and a few subsequent health news articles, which those who were paying attention shared around the FMD community. To any FMD patient, the findings were less than surprising. Of the 339 patients studied, 91 percent were female—a fact evidenced by any FMD social community , including the one for which I am a co-founder and moderator called FMD Chat . More than 95 percent of patients suffered one or more of the following symptoms: high blood pressure (66 percent); headaches (53 percent); rhythmic ringing in ears (30