AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FLOW PATTERNS IN VARIOUS PERIPHERAL ARTERIES

Abstract

Flow patterns (and simultaneous intra-arterial pressure curves) have been optically recorded with an improved orifice-type flow meter in the renal, hepatic, superior mesenteric, femoral, axillary, and common carotid arteries of dogs to which has been administered only anesthetic and anticoagulant. A flow pattern may be characteristically distinctive of a given artery and its bed, but flow patterns in heteronymous arteries exhibit wide variations in magnitude, timing, direction, and rate of flow and in similarity of contour to their respective pressure pulses. Back flow components exist in the femoral and axillary arterial flow patterns, and occur frequently in the common carotid patterns. The renal, hepatic, and superior mesenteric arteries exhibit only forward flow. A study was made revealing the probable determinants of, and their interrelated influences upon, the phasic rate of inflow to a bed (flow pattern) under the above and other physiological conditions. Although the above analysis does not lend itself to a quantitative evaluation of the static and dynamic factors which initiate and moderate the phasic rate of inflow to a bed, it constitutes a basis for a qualitative evaluation of differences among, and changes in, flow patterns recorded in the same or different arteries under various physiological conditions.