At Henry Ford, our vascular doctors offer every available treatment for PAD. Your care team works closely with you to customize a treatment plan based on your symptoms, risk factors and test results.
The treatment goals for PAD are to:
- Relieve leg pain and other symptoms so that you can exercise and do everyday activities
- Treat atherosclerosis to help prevent complications such as heart attack, stroke and critical limb ischemia, which can lead to amputation
- Maintain your overall health to help improve your quality of life
Exercise therapy and medications for peripheral artery disease
When possible, our vascular specialists begin treatment with noninvasive therapies, which can include:
Counseling about healthy lifestyle habits
Small lifestyle changes can effectively relieve your symptoms. Our preventive specialists have years of experience helping people with PAD develop realistic goals that can improve the way they feel.
You can work with us one-on-one, or we can refer you to Henry Ford programs such as:
- Tobacco Treatment Service, which includes options for individual coaching by phone and Freedom From Smoking® classes
- Henry Ford PREVENT Program, a medically supervised exercise program with individual and group options, nutrition classes and education on healthy habits
Supervised exercise therapy for PAD
You have access to supervised exercise therapy (SET), approved and covered by Medicare. Research has shown that SET can help people with PAD walk farther after they complain of occasional leg pain (intermittent claudication).
Our 12-week SET program includes:
- Supervised therapy with our exercise physiologist three times per week on a treadmill
- A plan to continue walking on your own, with or without a treadmill
Medication to treat peripheral artery disease
Medication can help relieve your symptoms and manage other health conditions that contribute to PAD. Depending on your specific needs, our team carefully selects medications such as:
- Blood thinners to improve circulation and prevent blood clots, stroke or heart attack
- Insulin or other drugs to manage elevated blood sugar
- Medications to lower blood pressure
- Pain medications to ease leg pain
- Statins to control high cholesterol
- Vasodilators to help improve blood flow to your muscles during walking or other exercise
Wound care for legs and feet
If you have PAD, you may have a higher risk of developing chronic, nonhealing wounds on your legs and feet. The risk can be even higher if you also have diabetes.
Chronic wounds can become infected and lead to tissue death. In severe cases, this condition may require limb amputation.
Henry Ford offers comprehensive treatment at our Wound Care Centers across southeast and south-central Michigan. Learn more about our team and the services available at our Wound Care Centers.
Minimally invasive treatments for peripheral artery disease
If medications and other conservative treatments don’t control your symptoms, we offer the latest minimally invasive procedures to treat PAD.
Our board-certified specialists have extensive training and experience in these endovascular procedures, which go inside the artery to provide treatment. They only require small incisions, so most people can go home the same day. You heal faster after a minimally invasive procedure, for an easier recovery.
The endovascular procedures we offer for PAD include:
- Angioplasty and stenting: We usually perform angioplasty at the same time as a diagnostic angiogram. After taking pictures, your doctor guides a catheter (thin, flexible tube) tipped with a tiny balloon to the treatment site. The doctor inflates the balloon to widen the artery and press any blockages against its walls, improving blood flow. Sometimes, we insert a stent (tiny mesh tube) to help keep the artery open. Some stents are coated with medication that slowly releases to prevent future blockages.
- Atherectomy: In some cases, we remove plaque during an angiogram rather than compress it, using a catheter tipped with a tiny blade. Your doctor captures larger pieces of cut plaque, while smaller pieces safely wash away in the bloodstream.
- Thrombolysis: Also called thrombolytic therapy, this treatment uses medications to dissolve blood clots blocking a leg artery. Your doctor can deliver the medication into the artery by injection or with a catheter procedure.
Surgery to treat peripheral artery disease
You may need surgery for severe blockages or blockages that worsen after receiving angioplasty and stenting. Our expert vascular surgeons perform open surgery to restore blood flow and reduce the risk of losing a limb to amputation. Learn more about vascular surgery at Henry Ford.
The vascular surgeries we offer include:
- Endarterectomy: To start, your surgeon makes an incision to open the artery at the blocked area. The surgeon then removes the plaque and, in some cases, the diseased part of the artery. If needed, the surgeon closes the artery with a patch made of synthetic material or a portion of another blood vessel.
- Bypass: Your surgeon makes an incision to access the artery and attaches an implant (graft) above and below the blockage. The graft provides a new path for blood to flow around the blockage. Surgeons use either a synthetic tube or a portion of a blood vessel from elsewhere in your body.