Abstract
Quantification of muscle tissue blood flow is difficult, since morphological findings like stenoses or occlusions, or blood flow measurements like venous occlusive plethysmography often do not reflect the clinical symptoms of chronic occlusive arterial diseases. This is reasonable, since in a great number of elderly people without clinical symptoms arteriosclerotic changes can be found angiographically. Venous occlusive plethysmography on the other hand is a measure for the overall blood flow, but is not a suitable method for determination of nutritional capillary muscle blood flow.