Peripheral Arterial Disease
What is Peripheral Arterial Disease?
Your arteries carry blood rich in oxygen and nutrients from your heart to the rest of your body. When the arteries in your legs become blocked, your legs do not receive enough blood or oxygen, you may have a condition called peripheral artery disease (PAD), sometimes called leg artery disease.
PAD can cause discomfort or pain when you walk. The pain can occur in your hips, buttocks, thighs, knees, shins, or upper feet. Leg artery disease is considered a type of PAD because it affects the arteries, blood vessels that carry blood away from your heart to your limbs. You are more likely to develop PAD as you age. One in 3 people age 70 or older has PAD. Smoking or having diabetes increases your chances of developing the disease sooner.
You may not feel any symptoms from PAD at first. The most common early symptom is intermittent claudication (IC). IC is discomfort or pain in your legs that happens when you walk and goes away when you rest. You may not always feel pain; instead you may feel a tightness, heaviness, cramping, or weakness in your leg with activity. IC often occurs more quickly if you walk uphill or up a flight of stairs. Over time, you may begin to feel IC at shorter walking distances. Only about 50% of people with leg artery disease have blockages severe enough to experience IC.
Critical limb ischemia is a symptom that you may experience if you have advanced peripheral artery disease. This occurs when your legs do not get enough oxygen even when you are resting. With critical limb ischemia, you may experience pain in your feet or in your toes even when you are not walking.
In severe peripheral artery disease, you may develop painful sores on your toes or feet. If the circulation in your leg does not improve, these ulcers can start as dry, gray, or black sores, and eventually become dead tissue (called gangrene).
Symptoms of Peripheral Arterial Disease
- Intermittent claudication, pain in leg while walking/exercising, stopping with rest
- Tightness of legs
- Heaviness of legs
- Cramping of the legs
- Sores on the bottom of foot, diabetic foot ulcers
- Ulcers on the leg
- Numbness of legs
- Cold feet or legs
- Non-healing wounds
How is Peripheral Arterial Disease Treated?
Treatment of PAD can range from the most minimally invasive treatments such as improved diet, exercise, and limited medication to the most extreme of minor amputations. The range of possible treatments includes arterial assist therapy, exercise, medication, angioplasty and stenting, bypass, endarterectomy, and amputation.
What is Arterial Assist Therapy?
Physicians and patients alike are starting to become true believers in what Arterial Assist therapy can do. The BIOARTERIAL PLUS system is designed to deliver pressures of 120mmHg for two to three treatments per day. The device increases arterial blood flow in both the popliteal artery and at the tissue level.
Substantial blood flow increases are realized through duplex ultrasonic imaging of the popliteal artery following treatment with the BIOARTERIAL PLUS. The affective compression and resultant evacuation of venous blood from the lower limb enables replacement with substantial volumes of oxygenated arterial blood. This non-invasive form of treatment for Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) is becoming a widely-prescribed mode of treatment.
Use of the BIOARTERIAL PLUS system decreases and controls the symptoms of PAD. Patients who have used this non-invasive mode of treatment demonstrate increased ability to walk distances, less claudication, less night pain and cramping, and an overall improved quality of life.
Ask your physician about how using the
BIOARTERIAL PLUS system for just two
treatments a day can do for you.
Intended Uses
- Ulcers
- Intermittent Caludication
- Ischemia
- Angioplasy/Stent Failure
- Arteriopathic Wounds
- Minor Amputations
- Rest Pain or Night Pain
Lifestyle Changes
Lifestyle changes that help you manage your leg artery disease include:
- Managing diabetes by maintaining healthy blood sugar levels;
- Lowering high cholesterol;
- Lowering high blood pressure;
- Quitting smoking;
- Eating foods low in saturated fats and calories;
- Maintaining your ideal body weight; and
- Exercising and walking regularly, such as walking at least 30 minutes 3 times each week.
Covered by Insurance
When properly prescribed by a physician or qualified healthcare provider, Medicare, workers' compensation, and many private insurance plans will cover the pneumatic compression pump.
Contact Prairie Medical for more information.
