Monitoring and interpreting compartment pressures in acute compartment syndrome

Abstract

Continuous compartment pressure monitoring, for acute compartment syndrome, remains an infrequently performed procedure despite the potential benefits some patients may derive from it. This state of affairs may, in part, be attributed to a lack of clinician awareness of an easy and cheap system by which compartment pressures can be monitored. In this article, we describe a simple pressure monitoring set-up that we have successfully employed in a variety of trauma patients, and how we believe the measurements obtained from it can be best interpreted to assist in the diagnosis of compartment syndrome.