Jo. Ciocon et al., A COMPARISON BETWEEN ASPIRIN AND PENTOXIFYLLINE IN RELIEVING CLAUDICATION DUE TO PERIPHERAL VASCULAR-DISEASE IN THE ELDERLY, Angiology, 48(3), 1997, pp. 237-240
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.