Association between peripheral arterial disease and cardiovascular risk factors: role of ultrasonography versus ankle-brachial index

OBJECTIVE: Most studies on atherosclerotic processes include peripheral arterial disease diagnosis only if patients report symptoms suggestive of peripheral arterial disease and/or an instrumental demonstration of lower limbs perfusion deficit is provided, rather than the sole presence of atherosclerotic lesions localized at lower limbs, this attitude leading to ignore early stages of the disease. To overcome these limitations, we have proposed a new ultrasonographic semiquantitative score to better identify all disease stages. The aim of this study is to compare ultrasonography versus ankle-brachial index in the association between peripheral arterial disease and cardiovascular risk factors. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional observational study included subjects undergoing lower limbs evaluation through ultrasonography and ankle-brachial index determination because of symptoms suggestive of peripheral arterial disease or presence of known cardiovascular risk factors. Associations between ultrasonography and ankle-brachial index with cardiovascular risk factors were assessed by first fitting logistic regression models and then comparing the respective areas under the Receiver Operating Characteristic and 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: The areas under the Receiver Operating Characteristic for each cardiovascular risk factors were consistently larger in magnitude for ultrasonography compared with ankle-brachial index, this comparison being statistically significant for age, male gender, smoking status, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and previous cardiovascular events. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates that ultrasonography is a better method to screen peripheral arterial disease respect to ankle-brachial index in order to identify all disease stages. These findings are useful in particular when including peripheral arterial disease as organ damage marker in cardiovascular risk stratification.