Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Treatment in Richmond, KY

Baptist Health Richmond: Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Treatment

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) treatment options include the placement of stents to open arteries. Learn more about treating peripheral artery disease from Baptist Health.

Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Treatment in Richmond, KY HealthTalks Transcript

Scott Cook, MD, Interventional Cardiology:
Peripheral artery disease, also known as PAD, is a disease process that occurs in the arteries of the body. The same disease process that can occur in the arteries of the heart can occur in various arteries throughout the body, including the arteries that feed blood to the legs, the arms or the kidneys. There are multiple comorbidities that affect the development of PAD. Those include tobacco use, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes mellitus. All of these things contribute to developing a blockage.

Esther Gay, patient:
I had been having issues with my blood pressure. When I would get up in the morning, my blood pressure would go up real high. Then it’d go down. Then maybe it’d go up higher. Then it would go down. He started the testing and ended up doing the heart cath, at which point they found the aorta virtually blocked.

Dr. Cook:
We gain access through an artery and take some pictures to identify how severe and where the blockage is. If we do identify a severe blockage, we can typically treat that with balloons and stents. I think it’s wonderful that we can now offer these services to patients right here in Richmond. These are services that typically you would have to travel to a larger city to have access to, and now we can provide those services right here at home.

Gay:
Dr. Cook’s got a place in my little heart, and he’s graduated. He gets hugs from me now. He doesn’t get handshakes. He’s my buddy. He’s got a lifelong friend, whether he wants it or not.