Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD): Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments

Sinuses Mia Garnsey

Medication

You can get medication to treat disorders like diabetes, high cholesterol, and conditions like high blood pressure (antihypertensive drugs). These drugs reduce your risk of stroke and heart attack while treating the PAD risk factors.

Your doctor might advise you to take an antiplatelet drug like aspirin or clopidogrel. To increase your walking distance, they might also recommend cilostazol. This drug enables persons with intermittent claudication to exercise for longer periods of time before experiencing leg pain.

Surgery

Even after a few months of exercise and medication, leg pain may persist in everyday life for some persons with more severe PAD. To ease discomfort while resting or to speed up the healing of a wound, people need to boost their blood flow in more serious circumstances.

Treatment options for more advanced PAD that is causing excruciating pain and restricted movement may include surgery or endovascular (minimally invasive) procedures:

Angioplasty [6]
Stents [7]
Peripheral artery bypass surgery [8]
Atherectomy [9]

Conclusion

The solution to avoiding peripheral artery disease (PAD) or stop it from worsening is to adjust your lifestyle. Maintain all follow-up appointments with your doctor and vascular specialist, and take the medications they recommend for all of your illnesses. It also helps to know when to seek assistance if you are aware of the PAD problems’ warning symptoms.

Reference:

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes

[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/abdominal-obesity-and-your-health

[3] https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/hyperlipidemia-overview

[4] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/

[5] https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/ankle-brachial-index/about/pac-20392934

[6] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/angioplasty-and-stent-placement-for-the-heart

[7] https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002303.htm

[8] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/24461-peripheral-artery-bypass

[9] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17310-pad-atherectomy

Mia Garnsey August 17, 2023

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