Thousands of people in China have had banned Alzheimer’s surgery
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- China's National Health Commission banned the experimental Alzheimer's surgery DCLVA outside research settings in June 2025, citing a lack of evidence on safety and effectiveness after an estimated 2,000-plus patients had undergone the procedure at around 300 private and public hospitals.
- Xie Qingping at Hangzhou Qiushi Hospital developed DCLVA based on a routine treatment for chronically swollen limbs, reporting on 50 Alzheimer's patients in 2024 — including a viral video of a bedbound man briskly walking eight months after surgery.
- Small safety trials in the US and Singapore, presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London, showed DCLVA was safe for up to six months; the Singapore trial found small cognitive improvements in two of seven participants, though none of the studies were randomized or blinded.
- Plastic surgeons performed many of the 2,000-plus DCLVA procedures across China, charging fees ranging from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand yuan per surgery, according to Steven Proulx at the University of Bern.
- Hui-Sheng Chen at the General Hospital of Shenyang Military Region is leading an ongoing randomized controlled trial of DCLVA against sham surgery, aiming to recruit 50 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's, with results expected next year.
- Multiple researchers, including Per Kristian Eide at the University of Oslo, raised ethics concerns about sham surgery in elderly populations and noted the trial protocol looks for cognitive improvements just four days post-surgery — too soon, Eide said, to expect any real effect.
Why it matters: The ban exposes how an unproven surgery spread to roughly 300 hospitals and 2,000-plus patients — many elderly, many paying tens to hundreds of thousands of yuan — before Chinese regulators intervened. With the only randomized DCLVA trial not reporting until next year and existing antibody therapies like lecanemab either unavailable or unaffordable, desperate Alzheimer's patients remain caught between hype and evidence.
