Our study aimed to identify the pattern of the risk factors in patients with critical link ischemia in a North-West Romanian population. A four-year-retrospective matched case-control study was conducted on subjects hospitalized at Second Surgical Clinic, Emergency County Hospital Cluj-Napoca. The medical charts of patients with critical limb ischemia (CLI) or varicose veins (VAR) as control patients were assessed. Six hundred and seventy-four patients were confirmed eligible and analyzed. The majority of subjects were males (M:F=227:110, P<0.0001). A significantly higher percentage of subjects in the CLI group were overweight, compared to the VAR group (P<0.0001), while a significantly higher percentage of subjects in the VAR group had normal weight (P<0.0001) or were obese (P=0.0218). As expected, a significantly higher percentage of subjects were smokers in the CLI group (P<0.0001). The multivariate analysis shows that type 2 diabetes mellitus (OR=7.4, 95%CI (4.2−13.0)), arterial blood hypertension (OR=2.5, 95%CI (1.6−4.0)), ischemic heart disease (OR=3.1, 95%CI (1.7−5.4)), smoking (OR=11.6, 95%CI (7.3−18.4)) and atherosclerosis (OR=9.3, 95%CI (1.2−72.4)) are significant risk factors for CLI. The patient with critical limb ischemia is an overweight smoker with type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertriglyceridemia, arterial blood hypertension, ischemic heart disease and atherosclerosis.