Dr Patrone discusses the few conditions that can be associated with the inability to undergo treatment for peripheral arterial disease.
Transcript (auto-generated)
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
So there are very few conditions which are not permitting you to undergo to any kind of vascular treatment, which could be the endovascular one or the open one. Essentially these are the patients who don't have enough symptoms. So essentially people who are claudicans, they can walk up to 200 yards, 300 yards before stopping and having cramps. This is what's called very mild claudication, despite it's quite affecting the life of many patients. It has been demonstrated by different studies that the best treatment is the conservative one. So essentially you walk, you walk, you walk, and then you take aspirin and usually a statin in order to maintain the blood, let's say, less thick and also in trying to prevent the you know the buildup of new pathology but these are the patients who want benefit for the treatment especially in the long run because of course if you deploy a stand in these patients who are very often like 50-55 he can stay open five even 10 years but there's no really treatment even the bypass sometimes which doesn't last that long you know for a patient to benefit for the procedure for all life. Instead, the developing of collateral is something which is extremely good in the long term because the vessels are multiple and the blood flow which goes through there, it's very safe because everything is natural. On the other hand, people who have dementia, people who are sometimes bed-bound, not enough of course with massive tissue loss they won't benefit from angioplasty so these are the patients who sometimes are good to be treated again in case of massive tissue loss with a primary amputation but we're talking of a very small amount of people. On the other hand sometimes when the disease is very very aggressive and the patient has massive tissue loss and the patient is young this is also a good patient sometimes to get an amputation because if someone is 40 and the leg is almost you know know, without any kind of hope, to have a prosthesis at that age, 40, 50 or 60, whenever someone is healthy and fit, can really push the patient to start with a new life. I know it sounds sometimes quite rough, but you know, these patients who are keeping the leg for years and years with interventions, multiple interventions with, of course, you know, the need to go to podiatrists, to go to vascular surgeons continuously to debride maybe the tissue loss, it's not good. Sometimes it's a good conversation which needs to happen between the vascular specialist and the patient and to decide in deciding the best for the patient sometimes amputation can be really a full stop for the life you know for the for a life which is now needs just to be put behind and a new life will start with your prosthesis.
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