The Cruel Irony For patients who thought that bypass surgery fixed them for good, PAD can seem a cruel irony.
Dr. Kevin Lisman
By Patti Muck This is a typical scenario for interventional cardiologist Dr. Kevin Lisman: A 54-year-old male diabetic smoker with high cholesterol, hypertension and a family history of heart disease comes to his office with shortness of breath and difficulty walking. Physicians diagnose him with triple vessel coronary heart disease. Bypass surgery eases his symptoms, he begins to eat better and exercise. But within months, he’s back to Lisman complaining of severe calf pain with every step. “We did an angiogram of his legs and found he had severe vascular disease on both sides in the superficial femoral arteries,” Lisman recalls. “We fixed both legs with stents, he’s lost 50 pounds, stopped smoking and he’s now five years out and hasn’t had any problems.” VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2
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