Arteriographic findings of claudication patients.

The purpose of this work was to study what kind of types of arteriographic changes occur in patients with claudication, whether the patients can be divided into different groups on the basis of the morphology of the arteriographic findings, whether there are any correlations between the arteriographic findings and the patient's age, sex, occupation, bodyweight, smoking habits, diabetes, hypertonia and the arteriosclerosis of the cerebral and coronary arteries. The series consisted of 490 patients subjected to arteriography of the lower extremities because of claudication. There were 399 males and 91 females. The following changes were seen in the arteries of claudication patients: --tortuosity of the distal aorta and the iliac arteries --arteriosclerotic wall changes varying from intimal thickenings to complete occlusions --collaterals --calcific deposits on vascular walls --aneurysms of the distal aorta. The vessels located proximally to the inguinal ligament were tortuous in 63,1% of the patients and extremely tortuous in 11,2%. Single wall changes were seen rarely; 69% of the patients had more than 6 separate plaques. Smooth and flat plaques were also few. 78% of the patients had wall changes of mixed shapes, and 81% had wall changes with irregular contour. A complete occlusion of a vessel was detected in 67%. Symmetric ASO changes were seen in the extremities of 5,3% of the patients. On the basis of the location and extent of the arteriographically diagnosed wall changes, the series was divided into three main groups. The first main group was further divided into three subgroups and the latter two into two subgroups each. Slightly more than half of the patients belonged to the largest group I A, where arteriosclerotic changes were detected in all segments. Gangrenous changes were most frequent in this group. The patients in group III A, which consisted of diffuse changes of the femoro-popliteal region, had the highest (31,8%) frequency of concomitant diabetes and the second highest (30,3%) frequency of concomitant hypertonia. Hypertension was most frequent as a concomitant disease (42,9%) in group I B, which consisted of the patients with aneurysms of the distal aorta. Single arteriosclerotic changes in the femoropopliteal region were few (1,2%). Vascular tortuosity increased with age. The older age groups had more arteriosclerotic changes particularly in the distal aorta, the deep femoral artery, the superficial femoral artery and the popliteal artery.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)