Vascular rehabilitation interventions in people with peripheral arterial disease: an integrative review

Peripheral artery disease, which occurs due to lower limb artery disorders, is associated with high cardiovascular mortality rates. Studies show that supervised exercise is an effective option for controlling symptoms.

This study identified exercise types and complementary therapies used for vascular rehabilitation in people with peripheral artery disease and discusses the best recommendations in the literature.

This integrative literature review is based on studies published in the last 5 years. The search was performed in the following databases: PubMed, SciELO, LILACS (BVS), and Cochrane. In addition to supervised exercise, the interventions in the clinical trials included other approaches that contributed to patient rehabilitation. Duplicate articles, articles whose full text was unavailable, and those whose title or abstract indicated they were unrelated to the topic were excluded.

Nine articles were included in the analysis. The results indicate that supervised exercise is the gold standard treatment method. However, therapies such as blood flow restriction, heat therapy, hydrotherapy, and resistance training can help improve treatment adherence, and their complementary effects benefit cardiovascular and physical function.

In patients with peripheral artery disease, exercise-based rehabilitation is fundamental. However, resistance training with blood flow restriction can optimize muscle strength, while heat therapy and hydrotherapy can act as adjuvants to exercise.