Peripheral vascular disease

There was a recent national news article saying that stents didn't relieve pain when placed in hearts, so you might want to check that. With enough exercise, and regularly, it is possible for PAD to abate or even go away -- depending on severity, probably -- because the body reroutes the flow through smaller or different arteries. This happened to me, and I'm very glad, of course.

Thank you for your reply @soloact. I am wondering- did you have to have any surgeries on your veins to reroute flow?

No. I think it's how the body compensates, just as brains find ways of compensating when there's an injury. However, my doctor was skeptical, and my case might have been mild. I'm 100% convinced that's why I stopped having the claudication that I'd had for nearly a year, though. I had it only after I'd been walking for a while, usually, but occasionally only after being in a big store for not very long, like a grocery store, and needed help out. I started walking more, as I could, and kept at it.

Thank you for sharing. Obviously, every case is different and my husband has other issues that most likely play into this issue as well. I just get a really odd, not good feeling about this when talking with the cardiologist's nurse as she more or less talks around the issue. My husband has excellent doctors at Emory and Vanderbilt, whom we have a lot of confidence in. Most likely, he will have opinions from three vascular surgeons. Thank you, again, for your response.

It sounds like my situation was much less severe, so definitely go by what the doctors say.

not yet but was referred to a vascular surgeon and put on a slew of horrible pills I took myself off of in 2 days.

Had my first angioplasty in my legs when i was 38, then 58 w/stent, 62 w/additional stent and now at 75 in a few days going to have stents put in my lower aorta and femoral arteries. Believe that walking till you drop, forcing through the “intermittent claudication” is the best thing for this. When i was more active, i didn’t have this much trouble. Walk walk walk…..and not stroll - walk like you have to get somewhere!!! Good luck.
Someone else recommended the walking too - along w/my doctor!!!