Haemorheological markers in 89 patients with stage II peripheral vascular disease (PVD)

Although it is universally accepted that the grade of reduction of district blood flow in PVD is directly correlated to alteration of the haemorheological pattern, there is still no uniformity of opinion regarding the existence of a specific rheological alteration in PVD. The scope of our study was to discover the existence of possible PVD-specific markers; we thus carried out a comparative evaluation of the rheological characteristics in blood of controls and patients affected with PVD. Eighty-nine males between the ages of 50 and 65 years (median 58 +/- 1 SE) were studied, all with a stage II vascular pathology with clinical onset of less than three months. Exclusion criteria were: diabetes mellitus, hyperlipaemia, stable hypertension, presence of vascular disease in other districts, cardio-circulatory problems and serious medical or surgical pathologies, previous vascular surgery, a history of acute thrombo-embolic episodes, and chronic alcoholism. Each patient, after a drug wash-out of 20 days, was monitored for haemorheological parameters. At the same time, the above parameters were measured in a group of 50 male controls of the same age range. All 139 subjects were smokers (10-15 cigarettes average per day). Our results indicate that modification in the bio-humoral (fibrinogen and plasma globulins) parameters, a reduced red blood cell filterability and a relative increase in the number of activated polymorphonucleate cells are probably specific haemorheological markers of the clinical onset of PVD.