How Is Peripheral Arterial Disease Treated?

Treatments for peripheral arterial disease (P.A.D.) include lifestyle changes, medicines, and surgery or procedures.

The overall goals of treating P.A.D. are to reduce symptoms, improve quality of life, and prevent complications. Treatment is based on your signs and symptoms, risk factors, and results from a physical exam and tests.

Lifestyle Changes

Treatment often includes making long-lasting lifestyle changes, such as:

• Quitting smoking. Your risk for P.A.D. increases four times if you smoke. Smoking also raises your risk for other diseases, such as coronary artery disease (CAD). Talk to your doctor about programs and products that can help you quit smoking.
• Lowering blood pressure. This lifestyle change can help you avoid the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure, and kidney disease.
• Lowering high blood cholesterol levels. Lowering cholesterol can delay or even reverse the buildup of plaque in the arteries.
• Lowering blood glucose levels if you have diabetes. A hemoglobin A1C test can show how well you have controlled your blood sugar level over the past 3 months.
• Getting regular physical activity. Talk with your doctor about taking part in a supervised exercise program. This type of program has been shown to reduce P.A.D. symptoms.

Follow a healthy eating plan that’s low in total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and sodium (salt). Eat more fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products. If you’re overweight or obese, work with your doctor to create a reasonable weight-loss plan.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) and Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) are two examples of healthy eating plans.

Medicines

Your doctor may prescribe medicines to:

• Lower high blood cholesterol levels and high blood pressure
• Thin the blood to prevent clots from forming due to low blood flow
• Help ease leg pain that occurs when you walk or climb stairs

Surgery or Procedures

Bypass Grafting

Your doctor may recommend bypass grafting surgery if blood flow in your limb is blocked or nearly blocked. For this surgery, your doctor uses a blood vessel from another part of your body or a man-made tube to make a graft.

This graft bypasses (goes around) the blocked part of the artery, which allows blood to flow around the blockage. This surgery doesn’t cure P.A.D., but it may increase blood flow to the affected limb.

Angioplasty

Your doctor may recommend angioplasty (AN-jee-oh-plas-tee) to restore blood flow through a narrowed or blocked artery.

During this procedure, a catheter with a balloon or other device on the end is inserted into a blocked artery. The balloon is then inflated, which pushes the plaque outward against the wall of the artery. This widens the artery and restores blood flow.

A stent (a small mesh tube) may be placed in the artery during angioplasty. A stent helps keep the artery open after angioplasty is done. Some stents are coated with medicine to help prevent blockages in the artery.

Other Types of Treatment

Researchers are studying cell and gene therapies to treat P.A.D. However, these treatments aren’t yet available outside of clinical trials. For more information about clinical trials, see "Links to Other Information About Peripheral Arterial Disease."