Predictive value of the ankle-brachial index in the evaluation of intermittent claudication
The purpose of this study was to determine whether the ankle-brachial index (ABI) could be used to predict the prognosis for a patient with intermittent claudication (IC). We studied 611 patients prospectively during 28 months of follow-up. We analyzed the predictive power of using various levels of ABI - 0.30 to 0.70 at 0.05 increments - in terms of the measure's specificity (association with a favorable outcome after exercise rehabilitation therapy) and sensitivity (association with a poor outcome after exercise rehabilitation therapy). We found that using an ABI of 0.30 as a cut-off value produced the lowest margin of error overall, but the predictive power was still low with respect to identifying the patients with a poor prognosis after non-aggressive therapeutic treatment. Further study is needed to perhaps identify a second factor that could increase the sensitivity of the test.
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Digital revista |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Faculdade de Medicina / Universidade de São Paulo - FM/USP
2000
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| Online Access: | http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0041-87812000000200005 |
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