Introduction: Atherosclerosis is the most common cause of chronic lower limb ischaemia. Many factors that have a crucial influence on the development of the disease, its course and prognosis have been identified. The risk factors seem to be subject to interventions due to their susceptibility to changes. It is important to increase the engagement of doctors and nurses performing the screening oriented on risk factors, medical consultation regarding giving up smoking, changing the diet and undertaking physical activity. Therefore, knowledge of the patients’ health situation allows introduction of optimal treatment in this group of patients.
Material and methods: The study group consisted of 119 patients with peripheral artery atherosclerosis, who underwent surgical and endovascular repair. The diagnostic survey method was used in this study. The socio-demographic and clinical data were collected using an originally developed questionnaire. The statistical analysis was performed using the data analysis software system Statistica, version 10.0, by StatSoft Inc. (2011) and an Excel spreadsheet. The statistical significance was set at p < 0.05 for all calculations.
Results: There were statistically significant differences between the analysed groups with regard to severity of ischaemia (p = 0.0001), intermittent claudication (p = 0.0001), rest pain (p = 0.0001), ulceration (p = 0.0031), smoking (p = 0.0075) and comorbidities (percutaneous coronary interventions p = 0.0299; ischaemic stroke p = 0.0235).
Conclusions: There are significantly more patients with more advanced disease and ex-smokers in the surgically treated group. There are significantly more patients with a history of ischaemic stroke, surgical coronary interventions and current smokers in the endovascular group.