No abstract

The study was carried out on patients with intermittent claudication (Fontaine's stage II). The arterial and atheromatous origin of the disease was confirmed and localized by angiography or Doppler velocimetry examination. One hundred eighty-six patients were selected initially. Their pain-free walking distance on a treadmill (at a speed of 3 km/hour and an inclination of 10%) had to be 150-300 m. During the first month all patients received 3 placebo tablets daily. At the end of this run-in period (D-30; D 0) and after checking walking distance stability (allowed variation: +/- 20% between the two measurements) the patients were included in the study. One hundred fifty-four patients were selected and 118 remained during the whole study. The study was designed as a double-blind, using two parallel randomly selected groups. Sixty-four patients received for six months Naftidrofuryl (3 X 200 mg tablets daily with meals); 54 patients received placebo under the same conditions. During this period, clinical and paraclinical examinations were carried out every quarter (D 90 and D 180). After checking the initial homogeneity of the Naftidrofuryl and placebo-groups, the comparison between groups indicates a significant improvement in Naftidrofuryl group after 3 and 6 months of treatment. At the end of the study the observed differences in walking distance with Naftidrofuryl are approximately twice the difference in the reference group (D 90: p less than 0.05; D 180: p less than 0.02). The results of this study indicate that Naftidrofuryl is an efficient pharmacological tool for treatment of patients with chronic arterial disease (Fontaine's stage II).