Treatment
The goals of the management plan are:
- Control the symptoms
- Improve the quality of life
- Prevent life-threatening complications
- Avoid tissue loss (amputation) as possible
The management plan depends on the severity of the condition, and it includes lifestyle modifications, medications, interventional procedures, and surgery.
1) Lifestyle modifications
Your doctor will recommend you modify some aspects of your lifestyle to control the risk factors, which reduce the symptoms and prevent worsening of the disease. These modifications include:
1. If you were a smoker, you should stop smoking. Smoking cessation reduces disease progression, reduce the symptoms, reduce the risk of all cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and improve your overall health status. It isn’t late to stop even after diagnosis.
2. Exercise: Regular exercise reduces the risk of all cardiovascular diseases and improves the quality of life in both healthy people and patients. In peripheral vascular disease, regular walking opens the collateral vessels (small alternative vessels) in the affected area, which improves the blood supply and reduces the frequency of the intermittent claudication.
3. Keep your weight within the healthy range. If you were overweight or obese, you should ask a nutritionist to give you a suitable program to reduce your weight to a healthy range.
4. Keep your food healthy and avoid fast food and saturated fats.
5. Avoid stress by using any stress-reduction technique suitable for you.
If you were hypertensive, you should follow your doctor’s instructions to keep your blood pressure within the safe range. It is the same in diabetes; you should follow your doctor’s instructions and keep your blood glucose within a safe range. Also, diabetic patients should regularly examine their feet.
