A COMPARISON BETWEEN ASPIRIN AND PENTOXIFYLLINE IN RELIEVING CLAUDICATION DUE TO PERIPHERAL VASCULAR-DISEASE IN THE ELDERLY

Peripheral vascular disease (PVD) commonly presents with leg claudicat ion during walking and eventually limits the walking distance and dail y activities. Aspirin or pentoxifylline are commonly prescribed to imp rove blood flow. Aspirin works through its antiplatelet aggregation me chanism, and pentoxifylline increases the red blood cell flexibility, which leads to increased tissue perfusion. Data on comparative studies of these drugs for improving claudication in the elderly are limited. The objective of this study was to compare pain relief offered by eit her aspirin or pentoxifylline for walking leg pain in the elderly with PVD. Patients sixty-five years or older with claudication were random ly assigned to receive aspirin or pentoxifylline. Their reported level of walking claudication pain with use of the visual analogue scale (0 -5) and the distance walked during exercises were recorded. Six weeks later the same parameters were recorded and results were compared with Student's t test, and a P value less than 0.05 was considered a stati stically significant difference. Of the 90 patients who participated, 45 received aspirin (325 mg daily) and 45 were prescribed pentoxifylli ne (400 mg tid) for six weeks. Both the aspirin and the pentoxifylline groups reported a moderate level of pain (2/5) and remained about the same (2/5 for aspirin and 1/5 for pentoxifylline, P = 0.9, NS) after six weeks. However, the pentoxifylline group reported a farther walkin g distance of 2 miles compared with the aspirin group of 1.2 miles (P < 0.05). The level of pain did not change significantly with either as pirin or pentoxifylline, but the walking distance was farther with the pentoxifylline group.