title: Predicting superficial venous incompetence with strain gauge plethysmography.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  With currently available effective interventional methods to treat superficial venous insufficiency, it becomes particularly important to have a simple and reliable method to evaluate the location and severity of venous reflux. To date, there are few studies that evaluated plethysmography with and without tourniquet application to differentiate superficial from deep venous incompetence.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To determine if strain gauge plethysmography (SGP) with and without tourniquet application can be used to distinguish between the superficial and deep venous components of venous incompetence.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a prospective study using SGP with and without tourniquet application and duplex ultrasound (duplex US) to assess the severity and location of venous incompetence in 62 patients (85 limbs, 42 women, with an age range of 32-81 years) referred to our vascular laboratory for haemodynamic evaluation. Based on duplex US results, patients were diagnosed with superficial (SVI), deep and superficial (mixed) and deep vein incompetence (DVI).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Mixed incompetence was the most common type. Twenty-three out of 33 limbs in the SVI group normalized their refill rate (RR) with tourniquet application (69.6%). Normalization of the RR with tourniquet application was less common in the mixed (n: 17 out of 40, 42.5%) and DVI (n: 2 out of 6, 33.3%) groups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SGP with tourniquet application is a simple and fast technique that can identify patients with SVI, based on RR improvement, who probably would benefit more from ablation procedures. Further studies evaluating impact of SGP with tourniquet test results on clinical outcome of SVI invasive treatment are warranted.
authors: Division of Cardiovascular/Vascular Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA. nskeik@yahoo.com.
authors: N
authors: N
authors: Skeik
authors: H
authors: H
authors: Kalsi
authors: W E
authors: WE
authors: Wysokinski
authors: T V
authors: TV
authors: Heaser
authors: P W
authors: PW
authors: Wennberg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010991:Plethysmography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D014111:Tourniquets; D018616:Ultrasonography, Doppler, Duplex; D014689:Venous Insufficiency / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology