This is the name of the circulatory disease that causes pain in the legs and therefore forces those who suffer from it to stop often during a walk, pretending to be interested in shops to conceal the discomfort.
One pain strong in one leg that forces you to stop after a while you walk: in an attempt to hide the discomfort you pretend to look at the shops, for this reason theperipheral arterial disease obliterans also known as shop window disease. But as the medical name i cramps they do not depend on untrained muscles, but on atherosclerotic plaques which obstruct the circulation of blood in the legs, straining the muscles that do not receive nourishment and therefore become sore. A walk can become a nightmare, but that is not the worst aspect: the pathology does not concern only the legs as it might seem, those affected by it and having symptoms for example have a mortality four times higher than the rest of the population. The experts of the Italian Society of Interventional Cardiology (Gise) report this, underlining that in Italy one in ten people after the age of 40 suffer from it, with or without symptoms.
A growing disturbance
Over the past 10 years for the number of patients with the disease showcases grown up 23 percent and is projected to continue rising as i risk factors, ie diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, sedentary lifestyle, improper diet. Smoking and the aging of the population also contribute: after the age of 65 there is an exponential increase in the frequency of the disease, which reaches its maximum incidence after the age of 80, observes Giovanni Esposito, president of Gise and director of the Unit of Cardiology, Hemodynamics and Utic of the Federico II University Hospital of Naples. The elements that favor the onset of the pathology are the same as those of atherosclerosis, of which the disease is not the expression in the legs. For this reason, those who suffer from it have a higher mortality: having peripheral arterial disease almost certainly means having plaques also in the coronary arteries and risking a heart attack, or having them in the carotids and being in danger of stroke.
The cause
The problem with the little-known and therefore underestimated window disease: if there is pain in the chest, one’s thoughts go to the coronary arteries, but if the legs hurt when walking, one only thinks of fatigue or muscle problems. Moreover, by continuing to walk, collateral vessels develop that allow blood circulation to reduce pain, but the underlying disease remains, Esposito points out. The typical symptom the so-called “intermittent lameness”: an initial feeling of seemingly banal heaviness in the legs turns into cramp-like twinges, which disappear for a while only if you stop walking. The diagnosis would be very simple and can be done in the clinic: just measure the pressure in the arm and then in the leg to detect the so-called “ankle / arm index”, different values are an alarm bell. Then, with an echocolordoppler of the lower limbs, the circulation of the legs can be assessed and the diagnosis confirmed. Once the window disease has been diagnosed, it is possible to intervene to improve the symptoms and above all to avoid the more serious general consequences related to the tendency to form atherosclerotic plaques: The first step is always the correction of risk factors; for those who do not yet have many symptoms, drugs are chosen to lower cholesterol, which are also recommended in symptomatic patients; in the latter, antiplatelet agents are also indicated, which reduce the formation of thrombus, says Esposito. Furthermore, anti-cholesterol drugs have proved to be particularly effective in decreasing the risk of cardiovascular events precisely in those with arterial disease of the legs: these patients, who are at very high risk, benefit from the reduction of cholesterol even more than those with only one coronary atherosclerosis.
The remedies
When the disease is at an advanced stage, one can choose theangioplasty peripheral: as with coronary arteries, specific stents are inserted that reopen the arteries, re-establishing blood flow and also resolving ulcers on the skin, which are often the most obvious sign of a serious pathology. In this way it is possible to save the limb from amputation, which unfortunately is a possibility in patients with serious disease in which the circulation of the foot or leg is compromised: more likely in people with diabetes, it can be avoided by recognizing and treating in time the disease of shop windows, concludes Esposito.
April 1, 2022 (change April 1, 2022 | 18:14)
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