Medical management of risk factors for vascular disease

Patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms, peripheral arterial disease, renal artery stenosis or carotid artery disease often do not receive optimal medical management. Early medical treatment is essential to reduce events and disease progression. Even in patients requiring invasive intervention, medical management improves outcome and functional capacity; it is also associated with reduced long-term morbidity and mortality. The major modifiable risk factors are smoking, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, thrombosis, obesity and diabetes; these risk factors should be treated aggressively in vascular patients. Establishing a role for emerging vascular risk factors, as well as for therapeutic angiogenesis, may lead to further optimization of management of vascular disease.