Definition

Peripheral artery disease is a common circulatory problem in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to your limbs.

When you develop peripheral artery disease (PAD), your extremities — usually your legs — don't receive enough blood flow to keep up with demand. This causes symptoms, most notably leg pain when walking (intermittent claudication).

Peripheral artery disease is also likely to be a sign of a more widespread accumulation of fatty deposits in your arteries (atherosclerosis). This condition may be reducing blood flow to your heart and brain, as well as your legs.

Often, you can successfully treat peripheral artery disease by quitting tobacco, exercising and eating a healthy diet.

Peripheral artery disease symptoms include:

  • Painful cramping in your hip, thigh or calf muscles after activity, such as walking or climbing stairs (intermittent claudication)
  • Leg numbness or weakness
  • Coldness in your lower leg or foot, especially when compared with the other leg
  • Sores on your toes, feet or legs that won't heal
  • A change in the color of your legs
  • Hair loss or slower hair growth on your feet and legs
  • Slower growth of your toenails
  • Shiny skin on your legs
  • No pulse or a weak pulse in your legs or feet
  • Erectile dysfunction in men

Causes

Peripheral artery disease is often caused by atherosclerosis. In atherosclerosis, fatty deposits (plaques) build up in your artery walls and reduce blood flow.

Although the heart is usually the focus of discussion of atherosclerosis, this disease can and usually does affect arteries throughout your body. When it occurs in the arteries supplying blood to your limbs, it causes peripheral artery disease.

Less commonly, the cause of PAD may be blood vessel inflammation, injury to your limbs, unusual anatomy of your ligaments or muscles, or radiation exposure.

Risk Factors

Factors that increase your risk of developing peripheral artery disease include:

  • Smoking
  • Diabetes
  • Obesity (a body mass index over 30)
  • High blood pressure (140/90 millimeters of mercury or higher)
  • High cholesterol (total blood cholesterol over 240 milligrams per deciliter, or 6.2 millimoles per liter)
  • Increasing age, especially after reaching 50 years of age
  • A family history of peripheral artery disease, heart disease or stroke
  • Excess levels of homocysteine, a protein component that helps build and maintain tissue

People who smoke or have diabetes have the greatest risk of developing peripheral artery disease due to reduced blood flow.

Complications

  • Critical limb ischemia. This condition begins as open sores that don't heal, an injury, or an infection of your feet or legs. Critical limb ischemia (CLI) occurs when such injuries or infections progress and can cause tissue death (gangrene), sometimes requiring amputation of the affected limb.
  • Stroke and heart attack. The atherosclerosis that causes the signs and symptoms of peripheral artery disease isn't limited to your legs. Fat deposits also build up in arteries supplying your heart and brain.

Tests & Diagnosis

  • Physical exam
  • Ankle-brachial index (ABI)
  • Ultrasound
  • Angiography
  • Blood tests

Medications

  • Cholesterol-lowering medications
  • High blood pressure medications
  • Medication to control blood sugar
  • Medications to prevent blood clots
  • Symptom-relief medications

Angioplasty and surgery

In some cases, angioplasty or surgery may be necessary to treat peripheral artery disease that's causing intermittent claudication:

  • Angioplasty. In this procedure, a small hollow tube (catheter) is threaded through a blood vessel to the affected artery. There, a small balloon on the tip of the catheter is inflated to reopen the artery and flatten the blockage into the artery wall, while at the same time stretching the artery open to increase blood flow.
  • Bypass surgery. Your doctor may create a graft bypass using a vessel from another part of your body or a blood vessel made of synthetic fabric. This technique allows blood to flow around — or bypass — the blocked or narrowed artery.
  • Thrombolytic therapy. If you have a blood clot blocking an artery, your doctor may inject a clot-dissolving drug into your artery at the point of the clot to break it up.

Source: mayo clinic.

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