The authors advocate for the routine clinical use of the ankle/brachial index as a powerful predictor of future ischemic cardiovascular events.
BACKGROUND: In the last years significant attention has been paid in identifying markers of subclinical atherosclerosis or of increased cardiovascular risk. METHOD: An abnormal ankle/brachial index (ABI) identifies patients affected by lower extremity peripheral arterial disease, and even more important, represents a powerful predictor of the development of future ischemic cardiovascular events. CONCLUSIONS: In our opinion, ABI is a cardiovascular risk prediction tool with very desirable properties that might become a routine measurement in clinical practice.
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Giugliano et al. (2012) studied this question.
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