Hypertension and other risk factors in peripheral arterial disease.

Aim of this study has been to evaluate the prevalence of arterial hypertension and other risk factors in patients suffering with PAD in two clinical samples (1.: 102 patients with PAD, 69 M, 33 F, studied in our angiology laboratory, matched for sex and age with 102 healthy volunteers; 2.: 184 hospitalized patients, 80 M, 104 F, mean age 57.2 +/- 10.8, with PAD) and in two epidemiological studies (1.: Trabia Study, 835 subjects; and 2.: Casteldaccia Study, 723 subjects). All patients performed a full clinical and laboratory examination, including the determination of the ankle/arm pressure ratio (Winsor index, positive for PAD when lower than 0.95). In the first clinical study we observed a significantly (p < 0.01) greater prevalence of arterial hypertension (51.9 vs 9.8%), hypercholesterolemia (48.2 vs 21.6%), hypertriglyceridemia (53.7 vs 26.1%), smoking habit (64.3 vs 44.2%), and hyperglycemia (26 vs 7.9%) in PAD patients than in controls. In the second clinical study, considering separately the patients under and over 65 years, all risk factors resulted more prevalent in younger people than in the aged, except diabetes and hypertension.