Title:How to Identify Subjects with Poly-Vascular Disease?
VOLUME: 10 ISSUE: 6
Author(s):Charalambos Vlachopoulos, Dimitrios Terentes-Printzios and Christodoulos Stefanadis
Affiliation:Peripheral Vessels Unit, 1st Department of Cardiology, Athens Medical School, Hippokration Hospital, Athens, Greece.
Keywords:Diagnosis, intima-media thickness, multisite arterial disease, polyvascular, prognosis, pulse wave velocity
Abstract:Multisite artery or polyvascular disease is common. In the REACH registry, 15.9% of patients with either established
atherosclerotic arterial disease or at least 3 risk factors for atherothrombosis had symptomatic polyvascular disease.
History of risk factors and known co-morbidities, as well as a thorough physical examination, are mandatory in the
initial screening and diagnostic work-up. Various non-invasive imaging techniques (duplex ultrasound, computed tomography
angiography, magnetic resonance angiography) can be used for the identification of the polyvascular patient. Digital
subtraction angiography is now used almost exclusively in association with endovascular procedures. Appropriate implementation
of each technique is based on international guidelines and a multidisciplinary discussion for each case.
The presence of co-existing disease in a different vascular bed is associated with a higher risk of recurrent symptoms and
complications in the first site. In this context, accumulating evidence suggests that arterial biomarkers, such as arterial
stiffness (pulse wave velocity), central blood pressures, wave reflections indices, ankle-brachial index, carotid intimamedia
thickness, as well as vasculogenic erectile dysfunction, can predict cardiovascular morbidity and mortality beyond
classical risk factors and prediction models.
An important pending question is whether identification of multisite arterial disease may improve clinical outcomes in patients
who are already in secondary prevention programs. Such screening of asymptomatic multisite artery disease in patients
with known CVD would be of paramount importance if it is ultimately proven with hard evidence that it should lead
to a different management from the one proposed for CVD patients without multisite artery disease.
