Better treatments for sufferers of peripheral vascular disease offers pain

relief for patients

Better treatments

for sufferers of peripheral vascular disease offers pain relief for patients

Peripheral

Vascular Disease (PVD)

affects the lifestyle of more than one million people in the United States

each year.

An early symptom

of PVD is leg pain while walking. More advanced cases express symptoms

of exercise-induced numbness, rest pain, tissue loss, infection or gangrene.

Risk factors

for PVD include smoking, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, elevated cholesterol,

inactive lifestyle and family history of the disease.

In the past,

if disease management and smoking cessation did not work, the only other

approach to treatment was surgical. Today, however, Interventional Radiologists

offer alternatives such as balloon angioplasty, stenting and clot-dissolving

medications to control and often eliminate PVD symptoms. The balloon angioplasty

procedure involves a catheter with a balloon attached to the end. Once

doctors identify the problem in the artery, they inflate the balloon to

push a plaque against the arterior wall, sometimes using a metal mesh

device, or stent, to keep the plaque in place.

Garrett G.

Ward, M.D. is among the interventional radiologists at Southern Regional

Medical Center who has had great success with this procedure.

"This

technique is administered through a small arterial puncture site so there

is no scarring, and the risks associated with general anesthesia are eliminated."

There is only a one-day recuperation and fewer complications.

"Those

who suffer from symptoms of PVD should know that there are available alternatives

to surgery that can treat, or even cure their condition," says Ward.

Southern Regional

Health System provides comprehensive health resources including: Southern

Regional Medical Center, a 410-bed, full-service hospital in Riverdale

featuring a state-of-the-art outpatient surgery center, a women's center

and one of the busiest and best emergency departments in the state; RiverWoods,

Southern Regional Psychiatric Center, a psychiatric facility with a complete

continuum of behavioral care services; Southern Regional Homecare, a home

health agency providing home health services and home medical equipment

and Surgery Center at Mt. Zion, a multi-specialty surgery center in Morrow.