Atherosclerotic renovascular disease in the United States

Atherosclerotic renovascular disease (ARVD) is an increasingly recognized clinical condition that is diagnosed predominantly in older patients. Here we used annual United States Medicare 5% Denominator Files and studied 16,036,904 patients, 66 years of age and older, to quantify trends in diagnostic rates, associations, treatment, and outcomes of ARVD over a 13-year period. Overall, there was an ARVD rate of 3.09 per 1000 patient-years, which rose progressively with an adjusted hazard ratio of 3.35, comparing data from 1992 to 2004. Within 6 months of disease diagnosis, 13.4% of patients had undergone revascularization. A biphasic pattern of revascularization was found where the adjusted hazard ratios significantly increased in a progressive manner until 1999, following which there was a decline through 2004, which was not significant. The method of revascularization changed markedly over time with endovascular intervention steadily replacing direct surgical revascularization. As a time-dependent variable, ARVD was associated with excess mortality in each calendar year, albeit with declining hazard ratio estimates in more recent years. Among patients with this disease, revascularization was associated with mortality adjusted hazard ratios <1 in each year. Our study shows the diagnosis of ARVD has substantially risen in the United States but the survival implications were not fully explained by other comorbid vascular diseases.