How does one go about getting peripheral arterial disease without first or in conjunction with atherosclerosis?
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
You’re right. It would be unusual. Still, it can occur.
One way might be through what’s called vasculitis or arteritis. This can complicate lupus for example. Another way occurs in men who are smokers and is called thromboangiitis obliterans (AKA Buerger’s Disease).
I suppose you could also call it PAD when the arteries become occluded because of clots that have blocked them off. Such clots may come from the heart or from prosthetic parts of vessels (eg. after an anueysm repair) or they may form “spontaneously”, eg. antiphospholipid antibody syndrome.
I should have added that I would wonder how it was ascertained that there was PAD in the absence of atherosclerosis. Angiography?
Or perhaps you meant PAD in the absence of atherosclerosis elsewhere in the body? That is not that rare and occurs, for example, in certain types of lipid (cholesterol) abnormalities (type III hyperlipoproteinemia).
Doppler showed reduced blood flow but no clots or hardening. I started looking around for an explanation for this but found none at all. So I came here to see if anybody has heard of this.
Heading things off at the pass— I have appointments with a cardiologist and a vascular surgeon.