Predictive power of cardiovascular risk factors for detecting peripheral vascular disease

OBJECTIVES: Peripheral vascular disease (PVD) is underdiagnosed in primary care due to the absence of established criteria to warrant diagnostic testing. Our goal was to establish a risk factor hierarchy to enable earlier diagnosis of PVD. METHODS: Data sets of 142 patients with abnormal ankle brachial indices (ABI) were randomly selected from our patient database to determine the prevalence of specific cardiovascular risk factors and demographic data. An ABI score < 0.90 is diagnostic of PVD. Patients were stratified into mild (0.75-0.89), moderate (0.50-0.74), and severe disease (< 0.50). RESULTS: Mean age was 69 +/- 9.9, ABI 0.65 +/- 0.16. Risk factor prevalence: diabetes, 42%; hypertension, 87%; tobacco use, 34%; hyperlipidemia, 53%; obesity, 24%; cardiovascular disease (CVD), 69%; stroke, 15%. Total risk factors per patient v = 3.2 +/- 1.3. Disease severity stratifications: mild, n = 46 (age v = 68.6 +/- 10.4, ABI v = 0.82 +/- 0.05); moderate, n = 72 (age v = 69.9 +/- 9.4, ABI v = 0.62 +/- 0.07); severe, n = 24 (age v = 67.5 +/- 10.9, ABI v = 0.40 +/- 0.06). Independent variable mean differences: hypertension-CVD (P = 0.0002); CVD-hyperlipidemia (P = 0.002); hyperlipidemia-diabetes (P = 0.0008); diabetes-tobacco use (P = 0.001); tobacco use-obesity (P = 0.0003); obesity-stroke (P = 0.05). Independent variable mean differences were significant across disease severity (P < 0.00001). CONCLUSIONS: Our study establishes the following hierarchy of cardiovascular risk factors as predictors of PVD: hypertension, cardiovascular disease, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, tobacco use, obesity, stroke.