The Treatment of Peripheral Obliterative Arterial Diseases

The principle of intermittent venous occlusion and its application to the treatment of organic obliterative vascular disease have recently been reported by us.1Briefly, this procedure consists of the application to the proximal portion of an extremity of a pneumatic cuff, which is inflated to a pressure approximating the diastolic level of arterial pressure. This results in the creation of venous obstruction and when the pressure is released a state of reactive hyperemia develops. The apparatus which we have devised for this procedure is designed to create alternating periods of venous congestion and release of this congestion.2 Lewis and Grant3have demonstrated that there occurs, during the release of venous congestion, an increase in arterial flow of as much as 600 per cent, depending on the degree and duration of application of venous congestion. They showed that this increase in arterial flow is the result of an