Intermittent arterial claudication. Clinical aspects--hemodynamic correlation
Boccalon, H.; Ginestet, M.C.; Gaye-Palettes, J.F.; Puel, P.
Journal des Maladies Vasculaires 13(1): 5-10
1988
ISSN/ISBN: 0398-0499 PMID: 3346616 Document Number: 307194
Intermittent arterial claudication is the master symptom in lower limbs arteriopathy. It is used as a reference in invasive or non-invasive arterial explorations. It allows to assess the evolutive degree of the disease and above all helps the therapeutic decision. The seat of claudication is traditionally acknowledged as being located immediately downstream of the significant arterial lesion. The purpose of our work was to verify such a notion and ascertain the relation between spontaneous and tread-mill induced claudication. 60 stage-2 arteritic patients were included in a prospective mode study. They were all taken in hospital for arteriographic check-up and vascular functional explorations: Doppler velocimetry, segment pressures, treadmill tests and pressure measurements after stress. The patients were classified according to age (table I), time of claudication record (table II) and lesions location (table III). All clinical and paraclinical data were recorded with a view to correlations interpretation. The relation between spontaneous claudication and tread-mill induced claudication was studied with respect to lesion sites (table IV). Among 37 patients 46% of the claudications observed appeared at iliac stage in both cases (fig. 1). In 35 cases, femoral claudication was observed in 48% (fig. 2). As for distal claudication among 6 patients, 3 showed calf claudication in both cases, i had foot claudication and 2 showed discrepant claudication types. The relation between claudication and lesion site was not confirmed in all cases. Buttock claudication always appeared in relation with a lesion upstream or an internal iliac lesion.