With
this instrument the patient assessed his perceived
difficulty in walking defined distances and speeds, the
ability to climb stairs, and the degree of impairment
caused by the symptoms of claudication. Responses
to individual items within a category were ranked on
a scale of 0 to 3, (0 = did not do, 3 = no difficulty)
and were aggregated within the category into a single
summary score as previously described. 4 The distance
summary score ranged from 0% (patient unable to
walk 50 feet without claudication pain) to 100%
(patient able to walk five blocks without clandication
pain). The summary score for walking speed ranged
from 0% (patient unable to walk one block slowly
without claudication pain) to 100% (patient able to
jog one block without difficulty). The stair climbing
score was rated so that 0% meant a patient could not
climb one flight of stairs without claudication, while
100% meant no difficulty in climbing three flights of
stairs. The claudication severity score was scaled so
that 0% indicated that the patient had much claudication
pain when walking, while 100% indicated no
claudication with walking.