By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
Dr. William Feeman Jr. brought his Marcus Welby-inspired style of medicine to Bowling Green nearly 50 years ago. For many of those years, he also has been an uninhibited voice and a frequent letter to the editor writer on his most passionate topic of heart health, but he has not been afraid to share his thoughts on gun violence, religion and politics as well.
On April 26, Feeman turned 80 years old and decided it was time to retire from his family physician practice on South Wintergarden Road. “I’ve let a lot of life pass me by,” he said about the countless hours and holidays he would be with patients in his office or at Wood County Hospital.
He doesn’t regret the work he’s done with and for his patients, but now there are other things he wants to do. Among them, he wants to slow down, not set an alarm and catch up on sleep, with the caveat that he will continue his quest to leave a legacy regarding heart health.
Feeman doesn’t plan to fade into the background. He intends to continue researching, writing and sharing his ideas.
From astronaut to family physician
As an undergraduate student at Ohio State University in 1961, Feeman bounced around in majors for the first year. “I wanted to be a missionary then a forest ranger, an astronomer and then an astronaut,” he said.
After watching the film “David and Lisa” in 1962, about two young adults who had mental health issues, he decided medicine sounded interesting. “I thought maybe I could be an astrobiologist for life in outer space to be able to do science and medicine at the same time.”
After graduating in 1970 from OSU’s College of Medicine, he joined the Air Force but soon realized he didn’t stand a chance to become an astronaut in the service because “there were a lot of people ahead of me who were jet pilots” and more likely to be chosen for the space track. Instead, he focused on medicine.
He found his way to being a family physician when the Ohio Academy of Family Practice was heavily recruiting family physicians. Feeman also recalled talking to an elderly woman who spoke about the care that “old-time doctors” like the TV doctor Marcus Welby provided.
One of the first things he noticed as a junior medical student on the cardiology wards, was there were a lot of people with heart attacks and strokes. He researched some of the best-known heart studies, highlighting the work of the Framingham Heart Study and the work of Dr. Bill Kannel, whose mantra was that heart attacks could be prevented. “Everything I’ve done has followed Framingham,” he said.
A prevention ratio
“I remember the ‘bad old days,’ when people who had heart attacks would just die. We didn’t have good predictors for who might die with a heart attack or stroke, and we didn’t have a lot of good medicine to fix it,” he said.
“In order to make predictions, you have to have evidence, or data, to support your predictions,” he said. In the past 13 years, he has lost only three patients to heart attacks, and each of those had extenuating circumstances. The last male who had a heart attack and wasn’t a smoker was 13 years ago.
“We had studies done in the 1980s and ‘90s that showed us it’s valid to lower the bad cholesterol, with the lower you get it, the better off you are. All the support we ever needed is there,” he said.
Through many years of research—reviewing data from his patients over 40-plus years—Feeman has identified a tool that he said can help predict the risk of heart attacks based on the cholesterol buildup on the artery walls. He called the ratio simple: the low-density lipids (LDLs) minus the high-density lipids (HDLs) divided by, or over, the low-density lipids. The bottom line, the key is to raise the good cholesterol and lower the bad cholesterol.
He also pointed to the Program on the Surgical Control of Hyperlipidemias (POSCH )Trial. Using his ratio formula on the 731 people in the trial, he said he accurately predicted heart attacks and strokes.
“Ratios simply give you a better way to predict,” Feeman said. He’s even created his own rap: “Up with the good and down with the bad. If you don’t do that, your heart’s been had.”
Good cholesterol can be low and if bad cholesterol is low a heart attack isn’t a foregone fact. Or if the good cholesterol is high, it might create a sense of false security. “You have to look at the whole picture, which is what I have tried to do, which is the reason I’ve had such few patients with heart attacks and strokes,” he added.
Primary prevention is key
Despite the evidence he has uncovered in his research and published in medical journals and presented at medical conferences, his ideas have often been ignored by mainstream organizations. He is not deterred. He plans to present his paper at the National Lipid Association’s Science Sessions in Atlanta in June and continue authenticating his findings.
He will continue to scour his patients’ records for data to feed his research for a little longer. He wants to give as much evidence to his strongest message—the importance of primary prevention.
If a heart attack happens in the left anterior descending artery, the patient doesn’t survive. “They don’t get a second chance,” he said. Primary prevention by knowing the risk of a heart attack can make a difference.
“You do the science and we judge whether it’s correct or not. If you try it and it works, you give up the old way; if it doesn’t work, you say you tried it,” Feeman said. “You try your best, and sometimes you get credit for it and sometimes you don’t.”
He knows his work and research have been criticized at times, but his life has always been a search for the truth, he said. “You do the work, show the results and hope sooner or later they will do it your way. The truth is, it may not happen in my lifetime, but I’ll be happy if my children know they are using ratios” to predict heart attacks and strokes.
