Peripheral Vascular Disease (cont.)
What are the treatments for peripheral artery disease?
Treatment goals for peripheral artery disease include:
- Relieve the pain of
intermittent claudication.
- Improve exercise tolerance by increasing the
walking distance before the onset of claudication.
- Prevent critical artery occlusion
that can lead to foot ulcers, gangrene, and amputation.
- Prevent
heart attacks and strokes.
Treatments of peripheral artery disease include lifestyle measures, supervised exercises,
medications, angioplasty, and surgery.
Lifestyle changes
- Smoking cessation
eliminates a major risk factor for disease progression and lowers the
incidences of rest pain and need for amputations. Smoking cessation is also
important for the prevention of heart attacks and strokes.
- A healthy diet can help
lower blood cholesterol and other lipid levels and may help control blood
pressure.
- Diabetes control
- Blood pressure control
- Lipid control
Supervised exercise
Proper exercise can condition the muscles to use oxygen
effectively and can speed the development of collateral circulation. Clinical
trials have demonstrated that regular supervised exercise can reduce symptoms of
intermittent claudication and allow the patients to walk longer before the onset
of claudication. Ideally, exercise programs should be prescribed by the doctor.
Patients should be enrolled in rehabilitation programs supervised by healthcare
professionals such as nurses or physical therapists. For optimal results,
patients should exercise at least three times a week, each session lasting
longer than 30-45 minutes. Exercise usually involves walking on a monitored
treadmill until claudication develops; walking time is then gradually increased
with each session. Patients are also monitored for the development of chest pain
or heart rhythm irregularities during exercise.
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