Welcome to the Podiatry Arena forums, for communication between foot health professionals about podiatry and related topics.
You are currently viewing our podiatry forum as a guest which gives you limited access to view all podiatry discussions and access our other features. By joining our free global community of Podiatrists and other interested foot health care professionals you will have access to post podiatry topics (answer and ask questions), communicate privately with other members (PM), upload content, view attachments, receive a weekly email update of new discussions, earn CPD points and access many other special features. Registered users do not get displayed the advertisments in posted messages. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our global Podiatry community today!
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.
Background
While capillary refill time test (CRTT) has been commonly used as a quick and convenient clinical vascular assessment of the lower limb, the validity of this test has not been established.
Objectives
There were three aims to this study: the first was to evaluate the reliability of CRTT, the second to investigate the premise that CRTT represents skin perfusion, and thirdly to determine whether CRTT can detect lower limb vascular disease.
Method
Intra- and inter-tester reliability was evaluated for five experienced physicians who used CRTT on 10 participants. Criterion validity for measurement of skin perfusion was investigated by comparison with laser Doppler flowmetry on 49 participants, and for this same group the usefulness of detecting those persons with peripheral arterial disease and a state of impaired healing was evaluated.
Results
CRTT had reasonable intra-tester reliability (ICC = 0.72) but poorer inter-tester reliability (ICC range = 0.12–0.81). For measurement of skin perfusion, CRTT was predictive of only 38% of the variance in laser Doppler flowmetry measures (r2 = 0.38, P < 0.001). Finally, CRTT was not able to discriminate between patients with and without peripheral arterial disease (z = −1.86, P = 0.062), nor could it discern between patients with and without impaired lower extremity healing (z = −0.21, P = 0.830). Laser Doppler flowmetry was also unable to predict the presence of peripheral arterial disease (t96 = 0.27, P = 0.787) and impaired healing (t96 = 1.95, P = 0.054).
Conclusion
These results question the usefulness of capillary refill time test for assessment of vascular status in the lower limb.
Capillary refill time test
Linear Mode
