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Peripheral Arterial Disease

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Jones, for what I think is the first time. It is also a great pleasure to see the Minister here to respond to the debate. I will try to persuade her that we can avoid lower-limb amputations if the national health service works more holistically. Amputations are in the mind of the general public for the tragic reason that many of our troops are returning home from war theatres—particularly Afghanistan—having undergone not only lower-limb amputations, but amputations of parts of their arms. However, the vast majority of amputations undertaken in the national health service are caused by peripheral arterial disease, diabetes or, quite often, a combination of both. Losing a limb is a tragedy for any patient, and their quality of life afterwards, particularly if they are elderly, can be extremely poor. Only half the patients who undergo a major lower-limb amputation as a result of such diseases live more than another two years. The number of major lower-limb amputations is still rising—there were well over 25,000 major amputations between 2003 and 2008. There is an urgent need to reduce amputation rates and to save more legs. The good news is that that can be done. Peripheral arterial disease is a form of arterial sclerosis and is closely associated with stroke and coronary heart disease. The condition is caused by a narrowing of the arteries, usually in the legs. A symptom of the disease is intermittent claudication, which is a cramping pain felt in the calf, thigh or buttock during walking or other exercise. It is caused by poor blood flow and affects up to 870,000 people, or 5 per cent. of the population. Without proper blood flow, wounds cannot heal, which leads to infections, ulcerations and, tragically, to amputation in some cases.