Determination of the efficacy of the mechanism changing the relative rate of blood flow through cutaneous and deep lying veins with temperature.
An analytical model of the circulation in the upper extremities of man is used; it consists of one artery, a deep vein lying close to the artery and returning a fraction p of the arterial blood flow, and a cutaneous vein carrying the fraction (1 - p). Using the model, a method is given for finding, for any subject, the efficiency of the mechanism which changes the circulation pattern with temperature. A patient's extremity is immersed in water at 25 and 10 degrees c and the rate of blood flow and rate of heat loss from that flow are measured. Computation of p for these two temperatures is reduced to the solution of two linear equations. The method is applied to 11 subjects and gives good agreement with results obtained by a more elaborate method.
D001132:Arm / Q000098:blood supply*; D001158:Arteries; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D012039:Regional Blood Flow; D012867:Skin / Q000098:blood supply; D013696:Temperature; D014680:Veins