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Peripheral Arterial Disease: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment

Men's Health, Women's Health / By

Peripheral Arterial Disease

  • Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a medical condition in which a buildup along the walls of blood vessels starts to make them narrow.
  • The disease is commonly found in people with type 2 diabetes who also have to deal with high cholesterol and heart problems.
  • In the US, 1 in 3 diabetics over the age of 50 suffer from PAD.
  • It is commonly diagnosed when it causes symptoms in the feet or the legs.
  • The buildup increases the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and aneurysms, making it something you should take quite seriously.
  • PAD is something that needs to be treated immediately, and you will need to consult with a doctor to learn how.
  • Let’s look at PAD in detail:

Causes

Diabetes is the most prominent risk factor for PAD.
Other factors that increase the risk of you getting this condition include:

  1. Having high blood pressure
  2. Having a family history of heart disease
  3. Being physically inactive
  4. Having high cholesterol
  5. Being overweight or obese
  6. Having dealt with a stroke or a heart attack
  7. Being over the age of 50
  8. Smoking
  • The buildup in the blood vessels restricts blood flow and often causes problems to occur in your legs.
  • They might show up while you are walking, coming across as numbness, faint pain, or tingling.

Symptoms

Although PAD affects millions of people, most do not know they have a problem since the symptoms of the condition are not always clear. The signs of PAD are usually very subtle, and they are not easy to detect. Possible signs of PAD include:

  1. Numbness or tingling in the lower legs or feet.
  2. Feeling a sharp pain in the calves while walking or exercising that tends to go away when you rest.
  3. Sores or cuts on the feet or legs that do not go away or heal quickly.

    You might dismiss signs of PAD as regular leg pain due to weakness or old age. You need to be careful about how you feel since even the most harmless sign may be due to some serious underlying problem.

Diagnosis

  • A doctor might check for PAD using an ankle-brachial index, which checks the blood pressure difference between your ankle and the upper body.
  • You might have PAD if the blood pressure in the ankle is lower.
  • In case the blood pressure difference is not clear, a doctor might use MRIs or other imaging scans to check blood vessels.

Treatment

PAD is usually treated through a mixture of medication and lifestyle changes.
Some lifestyle changes you might have to make are:

  1. Quitting smoking
  2. Exercising regularly
  3. Decreasing fats in your diet
  4. Lowering cholesterol
  5. Monitoring blood pressure
  • You might need to take antiplatelet drugs to decrease the risk of blood clotting and other medication to help bring down cholesterol and blood glucose levels.
  • In serious cases, surgery may be necessary.