Why does peripheral arterial disease often go untreated?
Peripheral arterial disease or PAD may often go untreated because people don’t think that those symptoms are worth telling their doctor about. They think that they’re the kind of cramps that one can sometimes have at night that just go away if you get up and walk around the bed. But the kinds of cramps and pain and discomfort you have in the legs when you exercise, the kind that goes away fwhen you rest and comes back again when you start to walk further, that kind of pain caused by a lack of blood flow really does indicate a serious underlying process and if patients don’t recognize that it can progress to a severe degree before they actually ever see a physician about it. It also can come on quite gradually so that the change is seen a little bit harder to notice than if they came on suddenly all at once.
