Effect of Exercise on the Peripheral Pulses

Abstract

IT is widely appreciated that some patients whose pedal pulses are palpable nevertheless complain of intermittent claudication. It has been noted further that these pulses may disappear on exercise; indeed, a fairly widely held theory assumed that arterial spasm was responsible for the claudication.The more recent utilization of auscultation and of aortography has established that high occlusion by atheroma is responsible for the claudication, and that the peripheral pulses are palpable because the occlusion is incomplete.¹ The disappearance of these pulses after exercise continues to be an interesting sign. The examination of this phenomenon through registration of the volume . . .