Treatment Options For Peripheral Artery Disease
Treatments options for peripheral arterial disease (P.A.D.) include lifestyle changes, medications, and surgical procedures.
The overall goals of treating P.A.D. are to reduce symptoms, improve quality of life, and prevent complications. Treatment is based on your signs and symptoms, risk factors, and results from a physical exam and tests.
Lifestyle Changes
Treatment often includes making long-lasting lifestyle changes, such as:
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Quitting smoking. Your risk for P.A.D. increases four times if you smoke. Smoking also raises your risk for other diseases, such as coronary artery disease (CAD). Talk to your cardiologist about programs and products that can help you quit smoking.
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Lowering blood pressure. This lifestyle change can help you avoid the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure, and kidney disease.
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Lowering high blood cholesterol levels. Lowering cholesterol can delay or even reverse the buildup of plaque in the arteries.
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Lowering blood glucose levels if you have diabetes. A hemoglobin A1C test can show how well you have controlled your blood sugar level over the past 3months.
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Getting regular physical activity. Talk with your doctor about taking part in a supervised exercise program. This type of program has been shown to reduce P.A.D. symptoms.
Follow a healthy eating plan that’s low in total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and sodium (salt). Eat more fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products. If you’re overweight or obese, work with your cardiologist to create a reasonable weight-loss plan.
Medications
Your cardiologist may prescribe medications to:
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Lower high blood cholesterol levels and high blood pressure
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Thin the blood to prevent clots from forming due to low blood flow
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Help ease leg pain that occurs when you walk or climb stairs
Bypass
Surgical bypass treats narrowed arteries by directly creating a detour, or bypass, around a section of the artery that is blocked. During a bypass procedure, a vascular surgeon creates a new pathway for blood flow using a graft. A graft can be a portion of one of your veins or a synthetic tube that the vascular surgeon connects above and below a blockage that allows blood to pass through it and around the blockage.
Amputation
PAD is the leading cause of amputation in people age 50 and older and it accounts for up to 90 percent of amputations overall. Normally, surgeons treat advanced PAD symptoms, namely non-healing wounds, with antibiotics, drainage or removal of any infected tissue to treat the infection area or through surgery or other procedures that help increase blood flow to the affected area. If these treatments do not work, however, or if the tissue damage is too far advanced at the time of diagnosis, amputation will remove a source of major infection and may be necessary to save your life.
Balloon Angioplasty
Your cardiologist may recommend angioplasty which restores blood flow to a narrowed or blocked artery. During this procedure, a catheter with a balloon on the end is inserted into the blocked artery. The balloon is then inflated, which pushes the plaque outward against the wall of the artery. This widens the artery and restores blood flow. A stent may be placed in the artery during an angioplasty. A stent helps keep the artery open after angioplasty is done. Some stents are coated with medicine to help prevent restenosis in the artery.
Stenting
A stent is a small, flexible wire mesh tube that is placed inside an artery. The stent buttresses the vessel walls and holds the artery open, enabling blood flow to continue through the diseased or weakened area. Stenting often follows balloon angioplasty as an additional treatment to help the artery remain open post-surgery.
Atherectomy
Atherectomy is a minimally-invasive method of removing plaque and blockage from an artery to re-open arteries narrowed by arterial disease. Unlike angioplasty and stenting which are designed to shift plaque from blocking blood flow into the side wall of the artery, an atherectomy involves inserting a thin catheter with a scraping blade into the artery. The plaque buildup is removed, opening the artery and restoring normal blood flow.