Diagnostic evaluation of extremity vascular injuries

Diagnostic evaluation of patients with possible vascular injuries presents the physician with a number of circumstantial impediments that may limit the applicability of clinical signs and symptoms, noninvasive testing, and angiography. The challenge is to know these limitations and learn to work around them while still applying clinical skills, noninvasive tests, and angiography when appropriate and feasible and to the limits of their worth, rather than to resort to either routine angiography or blind exploration in every case.