Peripheral Arterial Disease Treatment

Peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, damages your arteries that deliver oxygenated blood from the heart throughout the body. Peripheral arterial disease causes important arteries in your extremities to narrow or clog. This most often results from a process called atherosclerosis. The plaque associated with atherosclerosis blocks blood flow and prevents oxygen from reaching tissue.

Some people experience pain or heaviness in their legs while walking, which prevents them from enjoying their lives and increases their risk of other illnesses. You may have peripheral arterial disease if you experience one or more of the following:

• Aching, burning or throbbing legs
• Leg pain and cramping
• Leg weakness, numbness and tingling
• Non-healing wounds or ulcers

If lifestyle changes aren’t enough to treat your PAD, you might benefit from minimally invasive endovascular treatment. In most cases, the interventional radiologist will make a small incision in your groin and using X-rays or other imaging will guide a thin catheter through your blood vessels to the occluded or narrowed artery. Depending on where the blockage location and how it looks, it may be treated with one or more endovascular techniques.

Angioplasty uses inflatable balloons to open narrowed arteries. During angioplasty, the vascular and interventional radiologist guides a catheter with a tiny balloon tip through the blood vessels into the blockage. The balloon is then inflated to widen the artery which restores blood flow.

Stenting may be required in conjunction with balloon angioplasty. The interventionist will place a stent, or a tiny mesh tube, inside the artery to help keep it open.

Atherectomy may also be utilized in situations where there is heavy build-up of plaque in order to debulk the plaque to optimize blood flow.

Thrombectomy can be beneficial a blood clot suddenly blocks blood flow to an extremity. Thrombectomy facilitates clot removal from the involved artery extracting or dissolving the clot.