The effects of exercise training in patients with peripheral vascular disease - a review

Abstract

Patients with peripheral vascular disease (PVD) suffer from the symptom of intermittent claudication and are therefore intolerant to walking. Exercise training has been shown to be a beneficial treatment for patients with PVD. Therefore studies have aimed to assess the efficacy of exercise training programmes. This review summarises the data on the efficacy of exercise training programmes in patients with PVD. Recommendations are made for the mode, duration, frequency and intensity of exercise training programmes. A systematic review of Medline, Pubmed and Science Direct was done of studies on exercise training and patients with PVD, particularly those using randomised controlled trials. Exercise training improves walking tolerance in patients with PVD. The common mode of training in patients with PVD in the past decade has been walking on a treadmill; however recently an upper-limb cycle ergometry programme proved to be as effective as lower-limb cycle ergometry in improving walking tolerance in patients with PVD. As weight-bearing walking programmes are uncomfortable for patients with PVD, this is an important development in exercise prescription for these patients. Most successful exercise programmes have been 3-6 months in duration for a period of 30 minutes to 1 hour, 2-3 times per week. However, 1 study showed that a shorter period (6 weeks) was of sufficient duration to improve functional capacity in patients with PVD. This is helpful for practitioners as exercise programmes of 3 or 6 months can be daunting for a patient to embark on. Finally, patients should exercise to maximal claudication pain in order to elicit the best training response. South African Journal of Sports Medicine Vol. 18 (4) 2006: pp. 116-121

A comparative study of upper body strength training exercise vs. treadmill walking on patients with intermittent claudication

“…Management for PAD includes medications, surgical therapy like revascularization, risk factor modifications, among these all exercise is an effective and economical treatment for improve functional ability and quality of life [3,5,[7][8][9][10]. Conventional PAD exercise training protocol includes walking, though according to evidences due to pain potential for self-reported walking declines 8.4 meters per year [5,6].…”

“…Upper limb aerobic exercises with arm ergometer are effective for IC and involvement of upper limb PAD incidence is compare to lower limb 20 times less frequent though upper body ergometer is costly and difficult to obtained compare to strength training equipment [3,5,6,8,9,[11][12][13][14][15][16]. Previously one study was conducted to find out the short term effect of upper body strength training exercises (UBST) on PAD, however study itself has some limitations in methodology and selection procedure [11,15].…”