Can you have peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and not know it?

You can have peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, and not know it. In fact, the majority of patients who have PAD are asymptomatic. It is not uncommon for a patient to show up with their symptoms of PAD with a vessel being blocked off 100 percent; it makes it much harder to treat. We often write off the symptoms of PAD as I’m getting older, or I’m getting arthritis or I have spinal stenosis or back pain and therefore you don’t get appropriate testing and by the time we see these patients their arteries are often blocked off 100 percent.