Peripheral Artery Disease Specialist Woodburn OR

Peripheral Artery Disease

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By Vonalda M. Utterback, CN

Chances are you’ve never heard of peripheral arterial disease, often called PAD, an illness characterized by clogged arteries in the legs and other extremities. Here’s why you should know about it: This potentially deadly disease affects 8 million to 12 million Americans, yet as many as 75 percent of them experience no symptoms and haven’t a clue they have the disease.

The most common type of peripheral vascular disease, PAD occurs when extra cholesterol and other fats, called plaque, collect in the walls of arteries. This process, if left unchecked, narrows the arteries and reduces—and eventually can totally block—blood flow. PAD occurs most often in the legs, but may also affect the heart, stomach, arms, and even kidneys.

“Diagnosis is critical,” says Dennis Goodman, MD, FACC, senior cardiologist at Scripps Integrative Medicine Department in La Jolla, California. “PAD is one of the strongest risk markers for heart disease. People with PAD have a six- to seven-times higher risk of heart attack or stroke (and may even face amputation of the affected limb due to gangrene) if the disease progresses without treatment.” If that’s not enough to encourage you to arm yourself with knowledge of this disease, consider this: Severe and symptomatic PAD increases cardiovascular and coronary heart disease mortality a whopping 15-fold, according to a study conducted at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.

Silent and insidious
PAD develops slowly over years, and symptoms may not appear until the disease has progressed to a very serious stage. “In fact, many people with PAD have no symptoms at all, at least until their leg arteries have narrowed by 60 percent or more,” adds Angila Jaeggli, ND, at the Bastyr Center for Natural Health in Kenmore, Washington.

To add to the confusion, people may mistake the most common symptom of PAD, claudication—a restriction of blood flow to the limbs resulting in fatigue, heaviness, excess tiredness, or cramping in the leg muscles during any type of exercise—as normal fatigue. Or they may chalk it up simply as a sign of aging. Adding further to the confusion, symptoms of claudication come and go, usually appearing only during exertion, which contributes to an “out of pain, out of mind” mentality. Other symptoms of severe PAD include lingering foot pain, slow-healing wounds on the feet or toes, color changes in the skin of the feet, including paleness or blueness, and erectile dysfunction.

Test it out
The initial screening for PAD is quick, inexpensive, and painless. Called the ankle-brachial index (ABI), the test offers a simple and reliable means of diagnosing the condition. The ABI measures the blood pressure of the ankle and arm at the same time using a pencil-shaped ultrasound device called a Doppler. By dividing the highest blood pressure at the ankle by the highest recorded pressure in your arm, your healthcare practitioner arrives at your ABI. Healthy a...

Author: Vonalda M. Utterback

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