Patients with Poor Blood Circulation in Legs Can Benefit From Home-Based Walking Program

A recent study found that home-based walking programs can help benefit those with peripheral artery disease (PAD), instead of forcing patients to visit a medical clinic three times a week to be supervised during exercises and workouts.

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a common circulatory problem in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to your limbs, according to the Mayo Clinic. Typically one's legs don't receive enough blood flow to keep up with demand, which causes leg pain when walking. Notable symptoms include leg numbness or weakness, coldness in lower leg or foot, and painful cramping in the hip, thigh or calf muscles after physical activity.

The study, "Home‐Based Walking Exercise in Peripheral Artery Disease: 12‐Month Follow‐up of the Goals Randomized Trial," was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association and led by Northwestern University physician and professor Dr. Mary McDermott.

McDermott and the researchers found that a home-based program might keep the affected patients more motivated because of the freedom it offers and it's also likely to be more cost-effective than hospital-based exercises and programs. This is significant because the National Institutes of Health estimate that one in every 20 Americans suffers from PAD.

"I was somewhat surprised that we achieved our results of a continued difference between the intervention and control groups because it is very difficult to get patients to adhere to an exercise program long term even when it is supervised, and our program was unsupervised, " said Dr. McDermott in this Reuters news article.

The study featured 194 participants who suffered from PAD and were divided into two groups for 12 months. One group was assigned a home-based exercise program and the other did not exercise. Each participant was required to take a six-minute walking test at the beginning of the study for evaluation purposes. For the first six months, the exercise group met once a week at an exercise center to receive instructions for their daily workout. For the second half of the trial they received a monthly phone call to discuss their progress.

Compared to the inactive group, the home-based exercise group showed an improvement in their six-minute walking distance compared to their initial test at the beginning of the study.

Robert Patterson is a physician and clinical researcher at Brown University and he believes the effectiveness of the study could translate into the health care system. He says that if insurers decide to get involved in such programs, a lot of money will be saved and fewer complications would be developed as a result of PAD.