TESTING THE EFFICIENCY OF THE COLLATERAL CIRCULATION AS A PRELIMINARY TO THE OCCLUSION OF THE GREAT SURGICAL ARTERIES

Abstract

The advantages of a preoperative knowledge of the possibilities of the collateral circulation — that is, of the behavior of the peripheral circulation in the dependent regions and organs after the occlusion of the main surgical arteries — is seemingly so obvious to all those who have kept pace with the progress of vascular surgery, that to insist on the great importance and utility of the methods by which such preliminary knowledge can be obtained would seem superfluous. Nevertheless, the majority of surgeons have up to the present time looked on the testing of the collateral circulation largely as a matter of theoretical interest, and do not attach much practical importance to the principle itself or to the tests by which it is applied. There is excuse for this in the fact that these tests are only of recent development, and have not yet found their way into the popular