What if part of Alzheimer’s isn’t just about the brain making too much toxic waste... but about the brain losing its ability to drain it?
That’s the theory behind a surgery now spreading across hospitals in China. Some patients with severe Alzheimer’s have shown dramatic improvement within days.
Here’s what’s actually happening.
Surgeons connect tiny lymphatic vessels in the neck to nearby veins, creating a new exit route for fluid leaving the brain. It’s called deep cervical lymphatic-venous anastomosis (dcLVA).
It started with one surgeon in Hangzhou in 2022. By 2023, viral patient videos had hospitals across China racing to offer it. Thousands of patients have now had it done, some paying over $30,000.
Chinese regulators have since restricted it to formal research settings.
The largest study so far followed 139 patients with severe Alzheimer’s and reported improvements in cognitive scores and Alzheimer’s-related proteins over 6 months.
But we still don’t know if the surgery caused those changes, or how long they last.
