Skin surface oxygen pressure in healthy volunteers and patients with arterial occlusive disease.

When measuring transcutaneous oxygen pressure at an electrode core temperature of 37 degrees C autoregulating mechanisms of skin microcirculation can be studied. Because of poor reproducibility of a single PO2 measurement we determined skin surface oxygen pressure fields out of 50 or more PO2 values. At the forefeet and calves of healthy volunteers the histograms were slightly left-shifted with median PO2 of 4 mm Hg. Patients with multilevel arterial occlusive disease and low systolic ankle pressure presented with a disturbed PO2 distribution with very low PO2 values close to zero. About 16% of measurements were above 10 mm Hg. In contrast, diabetics had significantly higher PO2 (median 8 mm Hg) at the forefoot level when compared with healthy volunteers or patients without diabetes.