[Venous exploration in the aged subject: Doppler, plethysmography, photoreflexometry]

The performance and the interpretation of venous explorations in the elderly patient are often difficult due to the frequency of a past history of venous diseases and associated pathologies. Nevertheless it provides valuable and often conclusive informations since, in our series of 110 patients over 70 years, in a city practice: more than 50 per cent of the clinical diagnoses of phlebitis were wrong (27 out of 47); 80 per cent of the phlebites that were diagnosed, did not ha a phlebogram (sural and/or isolated femoro-popliteal phlebites). In all patients suffering from chronic edema as well as 96 per cent of those with trophic disorders, an etiological diagnosis was possible. Finally, it must be emphasized that, in 110 patients, 23 (or 21%) presented disorders secondary to a superficial venous insufficiency, isolated or predominant, which, as a rule, had not been diagnosed clinically.