Description

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a form of cardiovascular disease that affects the arteries supplying blood flow to the legs. The prevalence of PAD is increasing rapidly in the United States. When PAD is severe, it can cause pain with movement and limit a person's ability to walk or perform their normal daily activities. With severe PAD, a procedure is often performed in which an artery is held open with a small tube called a stent.

Programs of exercise-based rehabilitation have been shown to greatly help these patients in terms of the pain they experience with walking, their ability to perform daily activities or those required by work, and improved quality of life. There is also a newer form of therapy, called prehabilitation, which has been shown to have important benefits for patients with PAD. Prehabilitation involves four to six weeks of exercise therapy and lifestyle recommendations before undergoing a stent procedure. Prehabilitation helps patients improve exercise tolerance and make lifestyle changes that improve risk factors before the procedure. Those who participate in prehabilitation programs have fewer complications with the stent procedure, spend fewer days in the hospital, and have a better ability to exercise and return to work more quickly.

Although the benefits of prehabilitation and rehabilitation are well established, most doctors neglect to recommend these treatments to their patients who undergo a stent procedure for PAD. The research team will study the impact of prehabilitation, rehabilitation or both forms of therapy. The results will likely encourage more doctors to recommend the best option for their patients, and possibly to recommend both prehabilitation and rehabilitation among patients who are having a stent procedure.