Narrowed arteries in the lower limbs

Symptoms indicating the disease

Blocked or narrowed arteries cause muscle pain when walking (claudication). The pain often gets worse when you walk uphill and goes away by itself when you rest. The pain is mostly felt in the calves, but you may also feel pain in the thigh or buttock.

The arterial blood flow may be so badly limited that you even experience pain at rest (not only when walking).

In the final stage there are sometimes even non-healing wounds known as ulcers or necrosis (when tissue dies off in a specific area). At that point, an intervention to restore the circulation is urgently needed.

Tests

To make a definite diagnosis, the following tests are carried out:

Possible treatments

To find out which intervention is recommended to improve your symptoms, the vascular surgeon will request an angiogram. Possible treatments include:

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