Transcutaneous Gases Determination in Diabetic Critical Limb Ischemia
- Elio Melillo, MD1,
- Mauro Ferrari, MD12,
- Alberto Balbarini, MD1 and
- Roberto Pedrinelli, MD1
- 1Dipartimento Cardio Toracico, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
- 2Dipartimento Chirurgia Vascolare, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
- Address correspondence to Roberto Pedrinelli, MD, Dipartimento Cardio Toracico, Università di Pisa, Via Paradisa 2, Pisa, Italy, 56100. E-mail: r.pedrinelli{at}med.unipi.it
Transcutaneous oxygen tension (tcpo2) quantifies oxygen delivery through skin capillaries as a function of two main physiological variables, the effective rate of skin blood flow and skin resistance to oxygen permeation, represented mainly by stratum-corneum permeability (1). Tcpo2 is an accepted measure of nutritive skin perfusion (1) and predicts the therapeutic outcome in critical limb ischemia (CLI) (2), a serious complication of type 2 diabetes, a disease characterized by the coexistence of macro- and microvascular alterations (3). Transcutaneous carbon dioxide tension (tcpco2), another tensiometric parameter, is sensitive to severe limb ischemia (4) and correlates closely with HCO−3 depletion, H+ accumulation, and acidotic milieu (5). Thus, tcpco2, by providing an indication of the local acid-base balance, might improve the clinical management of patients on CLI, but its prognostic potential in that context is unknown.
We addressed this issue in 31 critically ischemic limbs (n = 26 …
