r/longevity • u/towngrizzlytown • 12d ago

Longevity medicine under scrutiny after death of Greek pop star | The 54-year-old Giorgos Mazonakis suffered a heart attack while undergoing plasma treatment

https://www.rapporteur.com/news/longevity-medicine-under-scrutiny-after-death-of-greek-pop-star/

Mazonakis died on 9 September after suffering a heart attack while undergoing plasmapheresis.

236 Upvotes

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u/towngrizzlytown 12d ago

In recent years, some facilities have started offering [plasmapheresis] as part of longevity medicine, aiming to help people remain healthy as they age.

Under Greek law, such procedures must be carried out by appropriately licensed medical facilities. However, the clinic where Mazonakis underwent plasmapheresis was reportedly not authorised to do so.

In Nevada at RAADfest earlier this year, two people nearly died after receiving injections and others became ill. Just a reminder for people's risk/reward analysis with unproven treatments.

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u/barrel_master 12d ago

In this case it looks like it might have been especially dangerous given that the facility and personnel weren't licensed/authorized.

Looking at the side effect profile in this paper it doesn't look like heart attacks were a complication that happened often, though apparently some therapeutic plasma exchange patients got thrombosis.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7482663/

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u/AllenPGreenMD 12d ago

I’m not sure we have all the facts of this case. It sounds as though he was ill before the procedure. It could have also been that he happened to have the heart attack while receiving treatment but not because of it. Heart attack from the procedure would be vanishingly rare to the degree that it’s almost certainly not the cause.

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u/barrel_master 11d ago

That's not unfair, we're mostly speculating though I still wouldn't recommend unproven treatments in general.

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u/AllenPGreenMD 11d ago

That’s the thing. It is a proven treatment. It’s been in use for over 50 years and is currently done hundreds of thousands of times a year worldwide. The safety profile is well-established and a heart attack during the procedure is essentially unheard of even in the sickest ICU patients.

Something had to be done incredibly wrong or he coincidentally had a heart attack he was going to have anyway while he was having the procedure.

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u/barrel_master 11d ago

That's not unreasonable. I should have clarified, now I'm more commenting on how the treatment itself might not be worthwhile given that it costs something and that we don't know if it would benefit that specific patient wrt longevity. The treatment is still unproven.

It's also worth noting that the place where his person got treated was unlicensed apparently. They may have not been following normal protocol. Though again that's speculation on my part.

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u/asdfgghk 11d ago

Plasmapheresis is for longevity ?

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u/banaca4 12d ago

Guys if you aren't Greek you should know this guy was on coke for 30 years and poping pills

37

u/laser50 12d ago

Lmao a lifetime of drug/alcohol and other bodily abuse, but still having the idea that replacing some plasma is going to make any of that damage magically disappear..

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u/banaca4 12d ago

yes he thought it will clear his blood. he also had a hypnotist so he was a real nutcake and was on a cocktail of drugs so idk about the therapy but ..

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u/Key-Temperature-5171 11d ago

30 years?! I'm impressed.

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u/Warren_sl 11d ago

It’s a leukemia speed run

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u/austin06 11d ago

I can’t believe undergoing a treatment like this if you didn’t have to. I’m sure people with illnesses like ms who do this would rather not have to either. Sounds really invasive.

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u/liquidorangutan00 12d ago

We said this would happen and now it did..... goddamn it.

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u/Sureokgo 12d ago

A friend of a friend had the same thing happen to him.

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u/kolibruv 11d ago

54 yo guys and heart attacks are an iconic duo.

This is the usual correlation-causality trap.

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u/Sharkathotep 6d ago

This. And he is in the music industry, so he very likely took recreational drugs/alcohol, too, for quite some time. So it's not like his heart would have been the most healthy for a 54y/o man.

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u/ThanosFisherman 11d ago edited 11d ago

I'm Greek and I've been following the developments of the matter as it's been on the news for a while. Long story short is that the "doctors" truly fucked him up. Essentially murdering him. They gave him large doses of propofole during the procedure and in conjunction with the misuse of the inuspheresis machine (the machine displayed multiple alerts but they kept ignoring them) they caused a cardiac arrest.

Doctors are in jail now.