peripheral artery disease
Sign in to saveAlso known as PAD, peripheral obliterative arteriopathy, peripheral arterial disease, peripheral arterial disorder
artery disease characterized by build up of plaque in the arteries that carry blood to your head, organs, and limbs
Key facts
- Other names
- Peripheral vascular disease (PVD), peripheral artery occlusive disease, peripheral obliterative arteriopathy
- Specialty
- Interventional radiology , vascular surgery
- Symptoms
- Leg pain when walking that resolves with rest , skin ulcers , bluish skin , cold skin, loss of hair, unusually smooth or shiny skin
- Complications
- Infection, amputation
- Causes
- Atherosclerosis , artery spasm
- Risk factors
- Cigarette smoking , diabetes , high blood pressure , high blood cholesterol .
- Diagnostic method
- Ankle-brachial index < 0.90, duplex ultrasonography , angiography
- Treatment
- Stopping smoking , supervised exercise therapy , surgery
- Medication
- Statins , ACE inhibitors , cilostazol
- Frequency
- 155 million (2015)
- Deaths
- 52,500 (2015)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- disease
- Image
- Pvd002.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- symptoms and signs
- intermittent claudication
- Commons category
- Peripheral vascular disease
- health specialty
- vascular surgery
- exact match
- identifiers.org/doid/DOID:0050830
- NCI Thesaurus ID
- C84496
- ICD-9-CM
- 443.81
- risk factor
- diabetes
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- WikiProject Medicine
via Wikidata · CC0
~32 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a vascular disorder that causes abnormal narrowing of arteries other than those that supply the heart or brain. PAD can happen in any blood vessel, but it is more common in the legs than the arms.
When narrowing occurs in the heart, it is called coronary artery disease (CAD), and in the brain, it is called cerebrovascular disease. Peripheral artery disease most commonly affects the legs, but other arteries may also be involved, such as those of the arms, neck, or kidneys.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “peripheral artery disease” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.