Temporal Trends and Outcomes of Peripheral Artery Disease and Critical Limb Ischemia in the United States.

INTRODUCTION

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a progressive, systemic atherosclerotic disease that is associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, and critical limb ischemia (CLI). CLI represents the most severe stage of PAD, characterized by progressive endothelial dysfunction and arterial narrowing. We hypothesized that the incidence of CLI and PAD would increase over the study period and that the rates of in-hospital mortality and major amputations among patients admitted with CLI would rise correspondingly.

METHODS

We utilized the National Inpatient Sample database from 2016 to 2021 using the International Classification of Disease, Tenth Edition, Clinical Modification codes. Patients with primary or secondary diagnoses of PAD were initially selected, and subsequently hospitalization with CLI was appropriately identified. The Cochran Armitage test was used to describe the trend of outcomes across the years. All statistical analyses were conducted using the software Stata version 17.0.

RESULTS

From 2016 to 2021, there were 2,930,639 admissions for CLI. Up to 65% of these patients were over the age of 60, and 35.8% of these patients were women. Most of these individuals were white (64.7%), followed by African Americans (15.8%) and Hispanics (12.6%). In-hospital mortality rates varied by revascularization method, with hybrid revascularization showing the highest rate at 2.6%, followed by endovascular revascularization at 1.8%, and surgical revascularization at 1.6%. Additionally, hospitalization costs were highest for patients undergoing hybrid revascularization ($46,257 ± $36,417), compared with endovascular ($36,924 ± $27,945) and surgical revascularization ($35,672 ± $27,127). Endovascular revascularization rates seemed to increase while surgical revascularization rates decreased during this time period.

CONCLUSIONS

PAD is a progressive, systemic atherosclerotic disease that is associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, and CLI. Our data showed that the rates of PAD and CLI hospitalizations have remained relatively stable from 2016 to 2021, but there seems to be a trend toward doing more revascularization via an endovascular approach as compared to a surgical approach.