Associations of symptomatic or asymptomatic peripheral arterial disease with all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality

• Main Authors: Eid M. Daoud, Mahmoud M. Ramadan, Nader El-Shahhat, Ayman A. Abd El-Samad, Nader El-Malkey, Sherif A. Sakr, Insaf Bassam, Hazem Hakeem, Asmaa Eneen, Adel El-Badrawy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2011-03-01
• Series: The Egyptian Heart Journal
• Subjects: Peripheral arterial disease; Ankle brachial index; All-cause mortality; Cardiovascular mortality
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110260811000238

Background: To investigate the rate of all cause and cardiovascular mortality in patients with symptomatic or asymptomatic peripheral arterial disease (PAD) compared to those without PAD. Methods and results: All the subjects were inpatients at high risk of atherosclerosis and enrolled from February to November, 2006. A total of 320 were followed up until an end-point (death) was reached or until February 2010. The mean follow-up time was 37.7 ± 1.5 months. Compared with non-PAD, PAD patients had significantly higher rates of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and smoking (P < 0.01). Those with symptomatic and asymptomatic PAD had a much higher all cause (37.5% and 23.0% vs. 12.1%) and cardiovascular mortality (18.8% and 13.8% vs. 6.7%) compared to those without PAD (P < 0.001). The symptomatic PAD patients were 1.831 times (95% CI: 1.222–2.741) as likely to die as those without PAD, and 1.646 times (95% CI: 1.301–2.083) in asymptomatic PAD patients after adjusting for other factors. Those with symptomatic or asymptomatic PAD were more than twice as likely to die of CVD as those without PAD (RR: 2.248, 95% CI: 1.366–3.698 and RR: 2.105, 95% CI: 1.566–2.831, respectively). Conclusions: PAD was associated with a higher all cause and cardiovascular mortality whether or not PAD is symptomatic.