Risk Factors of Peripheral Artery Disease
The most common risk factor is the use of tobacco, which is also likely to cause complications. In fact, 80% of people with PAD are people who smoke now or used to smoke. Using tobacco increases the risk for PAD by 400%. It also brings on PAD symptoms almost 10 years earlier.
Compared with non-smokers of the same age, people who smoke and have PAD are more likely to:
- Experience fatal heart attack or stroke
- Have a limb amputated
- Have poorer results with bypass surgery procedures on their legs
Peripheral arterial disease can happen to anyone, regardless of their sex, especially when you have one or more of these risk factors:
- Having diabetes [1]
- Using tobacco products (the most potent risk factor)
- Having abdominal obesity [2]
- Being 50 years and older
- Having high blood pressure
- Being African American
- Having a personal or family history of heart or blood vessel disease
- Having high cholesterol (hyperlipidemia) [3]
- Having a blood clotting disorder.
- Having kidney disease (both a risk factor and a consequence of PAD).
Although coronary artery disease and PAD are two distinct conditions, they are connected. Those who possess one are more likely to possess the other. A person with PAD is more likely than someone without it to suffer from coronary artery disease, a heart attack, a stroke, [4] or a transient ischemic attack (mini-stroke). Peripheral artery disease in the legs affects 1 in 3 people with heart disease.
It should come as no surprise that the two diseases also have some similar risk factors. This is due to the fact that these risk factors alter your arm and leg arteries in the same way they alter your heart’s arteries.