Patient-centered Outcomes Related to TReatment Practices in Peripheral Arterial Disease: Investigating Trajectories (PORTRAIT)

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a highly prevalent, but undertreated atherosclerotic disease with a disproportionately poor cardiovascular prognosis, as compared with other cardiovascular diseases. Cardiac events are, however, only one manifestation of PAD. Patients' health status (symptoms, function, and quality of life) are critical outcomes from patients' perspectives. To date, there have been no systematic prospective evaluations of disease-specific health status outcomes in PAD and how these vary by treatment and patient characteristics. The long-term goal of our work is to create an evidence-based multi-modal PAD management program that can be individualized to each patient. Following our preparatory work in Pilot PCORI grant 1 IP2 PI000753-01, the current proposal will develop a multi-center observational registry called PORTRAIT (Patient-centered Outcomes Related to Treatment Practices in peripheral Arterial disease: Investigating Trajectories). PORTRAIT will prospectively define and relate patients' care to their health status outcomes as a function of their treatment received at specialty clinics for new-onset, or exacerbations, of their PAD. We hypothesize that there will be substantial variability in treatment patterns across providers and by patient characteristics and that these will explain much of the variation in patients' health status outcomes. Four hypothesis-driven specific aims will be tested; the 5th aim will result in a direct deliverable from this study:

Aim 1: We hypothesize strong associations between the severity of patients' health status and the use of revascularization and that these will vary by age, gender, race, and socio-economic status. This aim will examine variations in treatment by patient characteristics as a foundation for identifying disparities in care.

Aim 2: We hypothesize that revascularization will be associated with more rapid, and larger, improvements in health status as compared with non-invasive options, and that these benefits will vary by age, gender, baseline health status, smoking cessation, minority race, and depressive symptoms. The primary objective of PORTRAIT is to quantify patients' PAD-specific health status outcomes overall, and as a function of treatment and patient characteristics.

Aim 3: We hypothesize that variations in performance measure adherence exist across providers, with greater adherence to pharmacologic therapies for prevention, than exercise treatments to improve function. We will compare real world PAD care against 4 PAD performance measures to provide insights into the quality of PAD care.

Aim 4: We hypothesize that variations in pharmacologic and supervised exercise will be associated with differences in health status outcomes and provide the evidence to suggest that failure to prescribe these evidence-based treatments will result in lower health status scores.

Aim 5: Use the new information to create educational tools to assist patients in selecting treatments.

Inclusion criteria

• Age ≥ 21 years
• New or recent exacerbation of exertional leg symptoms
• Resting ankle-brachial index assessment ≤0.90 or drop in post-exercise ankle pressure ≥20 mmHg

Exclusion criteria

• Non-compressible ankle-brachial index (≥1.30)
• Critical limb ischemia
• Lower-limb endovascular or surgical vascular procedure in past year
• Not speaking either English or Spanish
• Hearing impaired
• Unable to provide written informed consent
• Currently a prisoner