Surgeon´s knowledge on the skin blood flow gives an important guide in all kinds of skin surgery. Lots of techniques of measuring skin blood flow have been proposed till now, including radioactive isotope clearance study and transcutaneous oxygen tension monitors.
Laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) is a recently developed method of measuring the blood flow. With a non-invasive sensor simply attached to the skin, skin blood flow of 124 healthy Koreans were measured at the face, chest,-forearm, hand, thigh, shin and the foot to investigate the difference of blood flow between the parts in normal person.
Following results were obtained;
1. Mean skin blood flow of the face, chest, forearm, hand, thigh, shin and the foot was 5.79 0.89, 4.56 0.73, 1.87 + 0.32, 3.43 0.59, 1.46 0.23, 1.72 0.28 and 2.35 0.38 mllmin/100gm of tissue.
2. Mean skin blood flow of the face and chest were higher than those of the extremities (p<0.01). Among extremities, values of the hand were higher than others (p<0.05), but there was no significant difference between the rest of areas.
3. Mean skin blood flow of the first decade was slightly higher than that of the seventh decade
(p<0.01), but there was no significant difference between adjacent age groups.
4. There was no significant difference in the skin blood flow between male and female.
5. There was no significant difference in the skin blood flow between the skin with or without underly-
ing muscle layer.
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