ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

International Angiology 2004 September;23(3):213-7

Copyright © 2004 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Quantitative air-plethysmographic venous function and ambulatory venous pressure in patients with primary varicose vein

Tachibana M., Hiroe T., Kanaoka Y., Ohgi S.

Division of Organ Regeneration Surgery, Department of Surgery, Tottori University Faculty of Medicine, Tottori, Japan

Aim. The pur­pose of this study was to inves­ti­gate the rela­tion­ship ­between air-ple­thys­mo­graph­ic vol­ume param­e­ters under stan­dard exer­cise load­ing and foot ­venous pres­sure param­e­ters under ideal exer­cise load­ing in ­patients with pri­mary var­i­cose veins.
Meth­ods. Sev­en­ty-one lower limbs in 39 ­patients with pri­mary var­i­cose veins and 8 lower limbs in 4 ­healthy con­trols were exam­ined. The ­patients includ­ed 12 males and 27 ­females, rang­ing in age from 36 to 79 years. Eight­een limbs were asymp­to­mat­ic (class 0) limbs, 28 limbs had symp­toms of swell­ing or heavi­ness (class 1), and 25 had skin ­lesions (class 2+3). The ­patients and con­trols were exam­ined with ­duplex scan­ning, air-ple­thys­mog­ra­phy, and ambu­la­to­ry foot ­venous pres­sure meas­ure­ment.
­Results. The mean ambu­la­to­ry ­venous pres­sure (AVP) was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in the class 2+3 limbs than in the other class­es, but it was not sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in class 1 than in class 0. There were no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­enc­es ­between the class 2+3 limbs and class 1 limbs in any of the air-ple­thys­mo­graph­ic param­e­ters. How­ev­er, the VFI in the class 0 limbs was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from that in the other 2 ­groups. Among all param­e­ters exam­ined, the ­venous fill­ing index (VFI) was the most close­ly cor­re­lat­ed with the AVP. All air-ple­thys­mo­graph­ic param­e­ters were neg­a­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with the VRT.
Con­clu­sion. Among non-inva­sive air-ple­thys­mo­graph­ic vol­ume param­e­ters, VFI is the most reli­able indi­ca­tor for quan­ti­ta­tive eval­u­a­tion of calf pump func­tion.