Effects of immersion of the hand in cold water on digital blood flow

1 January 1965

journal article
Published by American Physiological Society in Journal of Applied Physiology

Vol. 20 (1) , 61-64
https://doi.org/10.1152/jappl.1965.20.1.61

Abstract

The temperatures of the tip of the middle fingers ( T_s) of nine comfortably warm subjects have been recorded during immersion of all the fingers of one hand in a 27–liter bath containing slowly stirred water at temperatures ranging from 4.6 to 40 C ( T_w). Blood flow ( F = ml/cm² per min) was estimated from the average T_s for the last 15 min of a 20-min period, T_w and body temperature ( T_b) by using the equation: F = 1,087 x K( T_s – T_w)/ ( T_b – T_s). (K = 0.0134 kcal/cm2 per min per °C.) The increase in F per °C reduction in Tw below 10 C was 0.16 ± 0.077 (P < .05). This value gives a measure of the vasodilatation occasioned by immersion in water below 10 C. The sample regression equation of F on T_w was: F = 4.1 – .16 T_w ± 0.17 (n = 27; range of T_w = 4.6 to 10 C). This method of estimating blood flow at several levels of T_w describes more fully the peripheral circulatory response to cold than methods in which only one level of T_w is used. cold-induced vasodilatation; temperature and finger blood flow Submitted on August 28, 1963

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