It’s no secret that heart disease is the nation’s number one killer, affecting 12 million Americans. As many as 60 percent of these patients will also suffer from vascular disease, or blockages in the arteries of the legs, arms, neck or abdomen.

For many patients with vascular disease in the legs, even walking one city block is sometimes impossible. The pain in the legs and feet associated with vascular disease is often unbearable; the patient must stop and rest to relieve the pain, which returns upon resumption of exercise. These patients often are prescribed exercise to improve cardiac health, and are unable to follow those orders, resulting in poorer cardiac outcome.

Many interventional and surgical procedures used to clear blockages in the coronary arteries are used in the peripheral arteries as well, including balloon angioplasty. To perform this procedure, a cardiologist inserts a catheter into the patient’s groin, threads the catheter up the femoral artery to the coronary blockage, and inserts a wire with a tiny balloon attached into the catheter. Once the wire crosses the blockage, the tiny balloon fills with saline solution and inflates inside the artery. The blockage is compressed against the vessel wall, the vessel opens, and blood flow is restored to the heart. Often, a stainless steel mesh tube, called a stent, is inserted to help “prop” the artery open.

Despite its success in the coronary arteries, this procedure does not always offer long-term success in the legs, especially in the femoral artery in the thigh. For reasons still unknown to physicians, this artery is prone to renarrowing after interventional procedures to open it – as many as 60 percent of patients will experience reoccurring blockages. Stents, which could help support the artery walls, are not a desirable option in this artery because scar tissue is highly likely to form within the stent, causing further blockages. Bypass surgery is costly and invasive, and grafts to this artery are prone to occlusion themselves. Often, vascular disease patients have no option for bypass surgery because the saphenous vein (the vein most desirable to use for leg bypass) has been used previously to bypass the coronaries.