Treatment Options for PAD
Lifestyle Changes:
Adopting lifestyle changes can make the symptoms of PVD improve enough to make more risky treatments unnecessary. These also help improve overall health and reduce the risks for other serious disease.
Medications:
There are some common medications that are used to help manage arterial disease and prevent serious problems from developing. Having regular check-ups with your GP, and taking prescribed medicines regularly, is shown to help prevent serious vascular disease.
Procedures:
If lifestyle modification and medical treatment don't improve the situation, or if there is significant pain at rest, painful non-healing ulceration or gangrene of the foot or toes, a more invasive approach to improve the blood supply may be recommended. The type and risks involved will depend on the individual case and will be discussed with you by your vascular surgeon.
Lifestyle Changes:
Adopting lifestyle changes can make the symptoms of PVD improve enough to make more risky treatments unnecessary. These also help improve overall health and reduce the risks for other serious disease.
- Quit smoking; If you are a smoker then quitting is the best thing you can do to help yourself and to prevent making your symptoms worse. Also smoking can cause stroke, heart attack, and cancer.
- Exercise regularly; Walking regularly for 20 to 30 minutes two to three times a week can increase the quality of blood supply to the legs. Over time new blood vessels can form, and others get bigger to supply the areas affected by narrowed and blocked arteries.
- Maintain healthy blood sugar levels and blood pressure.
- Follow a heart-healthy diet.
Medications:
There are some common medications that are used to help manage arterial disease and prevent serious problems from developing. Having regular check-ups with your GP, and taking prescribed medicines regularly, is shown to help prevent serious vascular disease.
- Statins: These reduce blood cholesterol levels but also improve the health of the blood vessels in other ways. They are shown to prevent disease progress.
- Antihypertensives: Managing high blood pressure is critical to prevent stroke and heart attacks. Treatment helps make the heart work more efficiently and with less strain.
- Antidiabetics: People with diabetes should take care of the sugar levels in the blood. high sugar levels are associated with rapidly developing arterial disease, but good blood sugar control can slow this down effectively. Some of the newer antidiabetic medications.
- Blood Thinners: The use of mild blood thinners like aspirin and similar drugs can help prevent disease progress and reduces the chances of major diseases of the heart and brain blood vessels.
- Specific medicine for PVD; Your vascular doctor might prescribe a medication to help improve the distance you can walk. The improvement can be enough to prevent the need for more risky and invasive treatment or surgery.
- Thrombolytics: In an emergency, if there is a sudden blockage of the blood vessel, powerful clot busting drugs can be injected into the clot to try and open up the artery. This is only done in a hospital setting and is often done at the same time as an angiogram. The clot buster usually needs to be given as an infusion over many hours to completely open a vessel up.
Procedures:
If lifestyle modification and medical treatment don't improve the situation, or if there is significant pain at rest, painful non-healing ulceration or gangrene of the foot or toes, a more invasive approach to improve the blood supply may be recommended. The type and risks involved will depend on the individual case and will be discussed with you by your vascular surgeon.
- Angioplasty: In a specially equipped room, and Angio-Suite, or theatre, a small tube can be inserted into the artery to pass a wire to the area of disease and through it using xray guidance. This is usually inserted in the groin artery after an injection to make it numb. Once the wire is passed it can be used to guide a balloon to the area of narrowing and then the balloon inflated to open up the diseased artery. This is called angioplasty. The balloon is removed completely. If the vessel hasn't opened up enough the same wire can be used to guide a stent into place to keep the vessel open.
- Bypass Surgery: Surgery is used to bypass the diseased artery in some cases. If the disease is too severe for a balloon to cross, or the need for the best blood flow possible is required, it is often better to bypass he disease altogether using either the patient's own vein, if one is suitable, or an artificial graft made of Gortex, PTFE, or a biological material. Bypass surgery is complex and requires a specialist vascular surgeon to perform it. There are serious possible consequences and the surgery requires hospital admission and treatment in theatres. Plenty of planning goes into these procedures and you will have the opportunity to discuss the procedure in detail and to your satisfaction before going ahead with any bypass.
