US · guidance
CMS Pub. 100-03, ch. 1, § 20.21
Chelation Therapy for Treatment of Atherosclerosis
CIM 35-64
Chelation therapy is the application of chelation techniques for the therapeutic or
preventive effects of removing unwanted metal ions from the body. The application of
chelation therapy using ethylenediamine-tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) for the treatment and
prevention of atherosclerosis is controversial. There is no widely accepted rationale to
explain the beneficial effects attributed to this therapy. Its safety is questioned and its
clinical effectiveness has never been established by well-designed, controlled clinical
trials. It is not widely accepted and practiced by American physicians. EDTA chelation
therapy for atherosclerosis is considered experimental. For these reasons, EDTA
chelation therapy for the treatment or prevention of atherosclerosis is not covered. Some
practitioners refer to this therapy as chemoendarterectomy and may also show a diagnosis
other than atherosclerosis, such as arteriosclerosis or calcinosis. Claims employing such
variant terms should also be denied under this section.
Cross-reference: §20.22.
History
(Rev. 1, 10-03-03)
Provenance
- Source
- cms.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-25
- Edition
- iom-2026-08-25
- Content hash
054e954bf435e279f71add1b47066b4652263a70d61593b939471e2c0775a7f5
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.