[Usefulness of thermal tests for evaluating vascular changes in persons exposed to vibration]

The investigations have been carried out on 40 workers of an industrial factory. Twenty workers used vibration tools, the others, having no contact with vibration, constituted the control group. Each subject had his skin temperature measured at 19 points of the left and right hands at ambient temperature of 22 degrees C and after cooling at 15 degrees C and 8 degrees C. The results have demonstrated that early vasomotor changes are best identified by the thermal test with cooling at 8 degrees C. Furthermore, this method enables a topographic estimation of the hand areas for special risk of the disturbances in blood vessels of workers using vibration tools.