What is Buerger’s disease?
Buerger’s disease (thromboangiitis obliterans) is a rare disease of the blood vessels in your arms, legs, fingers and toes. Inflammation in your blood vessels makes it hard for your blood to flow through them. Blood clots can form, which create obstacles inside your blood vessels. As a result, you can have pain and damaged tissues starting in your fingers and toes and spreading to your arms and legs.
What are the symptoms of Buerger’s disease?
Early signs of Buerger’s disease include severe pain in your legs and arms. This pain happens when your body is resting.
Buerger’s disease symptoms develop slowly over time. Symptoms include:
- Hand or foot pain (burning or tingling feeling).
- Sores on toes or fingers.
- Ankle, foot or leg pain when you walk.
- Raynaud’s syndrome.
- Skin color or texture change.
Other Buerger’s disease symptoms may happen after you’ve had it for a while. These include:
- Muscle cramps.
- Blood clots in blood vessels.
- Red, blue or pale fingers or toes.
- Cold or numb feet or hands.
- Gangrene.
- Skin ulcers.
How is Buerger’s disease treated?
There’s no cure for Buerger’s disease, but stopping all tobacco, marijuana and nicotine use is the best way to keep Buerger’s disease from getting worse. Providers also recommend avoiding secondhand smoke (other people’s smoke).
The disease can keep getting worse even if you only smoke one cigarette each day.
When people with Buerger’s disease stop smoking, their symptoms usually get better. In some people, the disease goes into remission (becomes inactive) once they stop smoking.
Specific medicines can help with your Buerger’s disease symptoms.
What medications are used for Buerger’s disease?
Some medications are helpful in Buerger’s disease treatment, including:
What treatments are used for Buerger’s disease?
You may get relief from Buerger’s disease symptoms with:
Complications/side effects of the treatment
Quitting smoking has no side effects. It improves your health in many ways.
All medications have possible side effects, and they vary by drug. Your provider will carefully consider the best medication for you.
Amputation of a finger or toe may lead to swelling, pain or infection.
Spinal cord stimulation has a number of risks, including:
- Nerve damage.
- Spinal headaches.
- Issues with the stimulator.
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