[Non-vascular claudication or "painful leg syndrome"]

All angiologists commonly find that a considerable proportion of the persons referred to an angiology clinic are in fact suffering from other pathologies. Many of these patients often complain of polyhedric, vague symptoms, sometimes pyrotic and sometimes disguised as cramps, frequently accompanied by paresthesia or hypasthenia of the lower limbs which is generally justified, above all in elderly patients, as being caused by "circulation disorders". The authors felt the need to perform this study with the aim of both evaluating the prevalence of so-called non-vascular claudication or pseudo-claudication, defined here as "painful leg syndrome", and to identify simple and low-cost clinical and instrumental parameters, which may be useful not only to the general practitioner but also to the angiologist. A large number of patients with "false claudication" (43%) was diagnosed in this series and the most frequent cause was neurological pathology (68%). Anamnesis and an objective examination should, if correctly performed, be sufficient for a rapid diagnosis of non-vascular pathology and should therefore be useful in limiting the number of requests for Doppler tests, thus reducing waiting times and management costs.