Three-month therapy with calcium-heparin in comparison with ticlopidine in patients with peripheral arterial occlusive disease at Leriche-Fontaine IIb class.

Forty patients with a mean age of 62.6 +/- 6 years, 36 men and 4 women, with peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) at Leriche-Fontaine IIb class, were randomly allocated to one of two treatment groups, receiving either 12,500 IU/day of subcutaneous (sc) calcium-heparin (CAE) or 250 mg/day of oral ticlopidine, each given for ninety days. The following parameters were evaluated before the start of the active treatment period and after thirty and ninety days of treatment: pain-free walking distance (PWD), maximum walking distance (WDmax), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP), posterior tibial arterial pressure and Winsor index at rest and after exercise (treadmill), transcutaneous oxygen and carbon dioxide pressures at rest (TcPO2 and TcPCO2 respectively), and time to 50% TcPO2 recovery after three-minute ischemia. Both treatments induced an improvement in PWD/WDmax, which, at the end of the study, were increased by 50.7/58.7% and 31.7/36.2%, respectively, for CAE and ticlopidine treatments, respectively.