EFFECTIVE USE OF ANTIPLATELETS AFTER RECONSTRUCTIVE OPERATIONS

Abstract

Treatment of chronic obliterating peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and the resulting chronic ischemia of the lower extremities is at the moment one of the most urgent problems in vascular surgery. According to recent reports, the prevalence of PAD has already reached the pandemic: in 2010, there were more than 200 million people suffering from PAD, including more than 40 million in Europe and over 14 million in North and South America. This disease is rarely found in patients younger than 40 years, but one person out of every 10 people aged 70 years or older and every sixth person at the age of 80 years or older suffers from it [1]. In the United States, there are more than 8.5 million people suffering from this disease. In this country among people older than 55 years 10% have an asymptomatic form of peripheral arterial diseases and 5% suffer from intermittent claudication (IC) [2]. In Russia, from 15 to 30% of the population older than 65 years have signs of obliterating diseases of lower limb arteries [3, 4]. In 2013, in 44 regions of Russia 173 883 new cases of PAD were registered, which given the high prevalence of asymptomatic forms of the disease (more than 2/3 of patients are asymptomatic) suggests that the number of this group of patients in Russia exceeds more than 1.5 million people.

Keywords

• peripheral artery disease
• chronic limb ischemia
• endovascular procedures
• prolonged drug therapy
• antiplatelet agents
• acetylsalicylic acid
• clopidogrel