Widower Wishes His Wife Never Came to Newport Beach for Controversial Surgery

​A Canadian man wishes his wife had not come to Synergy Health Concepts in Newport Beach for treatment.

Make that, his late wife.

Maralyn Clarke, 56, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage hours after having her neck veins opened at the clinic, where the Calgary woman had undergone an experimental vein treatment for multiple sclerosis.

"I deeply regret she's not here and in hindsight I wish she hadn't had the procedure," Frank Lamb, Clarke's wife, tells the Calgary Herald.

"Something like this was never supposed to happen," he said of her death after the controversial "liberation" procedure. "The only way I could have stopped her from getting this treatment would have been to tie her up."

His wife attended a Synergy Health Concepts seminar earlier this year in Calgary, where clinic doctors explained the procedure developed by Italian neurologist Paolo Zamboni that involves opening up blocked veins. Stenosis, a narrowing or blockage of veins in the neck that drain blood from the brain, results in MS symptoms, according to Zamboni's theory.

In the recovery room after the $12,000 surgery, Clarke had extremely high blood pressure, according to Lamb, who said staff gave her medication and sent her on her way. Within hours, she suffered an extreme headache, nausea and vomiting. An ambulance rushed her to emergency at a nearby hospital.

She was taken off life support on April 18 after doctors determined she had suffered irreversible brain damage.

"No one ever mentioned this was a risk," according to Lamb. "I wonder if things would have turned out better if she'd been able to receive the treatment in a proper hospital."

The Canadian government announced on June 29 that it would fund clinical trials of liberation therapy for multiple sclerosis patients.

Despite his wife's experiences in Newport Beach, Lamb says he supports that.