Acral Diagnosis and Possibilities of Conservative Treatment of Chronic Obstructive Vascular Diseases

Abstract

One of the main problems which confronts a doctor practicing in the angiology field is the decision if a conservative treatment alone is going to be sufficient for a patient or if he has to decide for vascular surgery.

Concerning the latter, there should be kept in mind that always an additional conservative therapy is of utmost importance since chronic vascular disease is looked at as a generalized phenomenon and surgical therapy can be used only in limited segments.

In order to make a decision whether conservative or surgical therapy should be applied we used the "Nitrate Test"—described in 1968 by Migliorini, Italy and in 1976 by Böhme, Germany—modified and developed it further.

Migliorini and Böhme stated that an increased blood flow after nitrate application is useful for the determination whether a patient suffers from a functional or an organic vascular disease.