No abstract

Prevalence of PAD in primary care practices is high, yet physician awareness of the PAD diagnosis is relatively low. A simple ABI measurement identified a large number of patients with previously unrecognized PAD. Atherosclerosis risk factors were very prevalent in PAD patients, but these patients received less intensive treatment for lipid disorders and hypertension and were prescribed antiplatelet therapy less frequently than were patients with CVD. These results demonstrate that underdiagnosis of PAD in primary care practice may be a barrier to effective secondary prevention of the high ischemic cardiovascular risk associated with PAD.

No abstract

THEROTHROMBOSIS (COROnary artery disease [CAD], cerebrovascular disease [CVD], and peripheral arterial disease [PAD]) is associated with the main causes of mortality on a worldwide scale. Recent US data have confirmed that despite a decrease in agestandardized national death rates, the absolute number of deaths from these conditions continues to increase, 1 and prevalence is sharply increasing in other parts of the world. Thus, atherothrombotic diseases are, and are projected still to be, the leading cause of death worldwide by 2020. 2 Thus far, most of the information available on atherothrombosis risk has been derived from single regional locales (such as studies conducted in Europe or North America), often confined to a single subtype of patient (patients with CAD, previous stroke patients without PAD), and generally limited to hospitalized patients (as op-posed to outpatients or individuals in primary care) or to patients in clinical trials (as opposed to patients in the community).The REACH (Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health) Registry has been established to circumvent these limitations by recruit-For editorial comment see p 1253.