[The treadmill test in the clinical evaluation of the lower limbs. With special reference to an elderly population...

The authors show that the treadmill is a good method for studying the peripheral circulation of the inferior limbs, without altering the coronary district capacity. This technique is fitter than the test of Master and/or cycloergometry because it swits the characteristics of elderly patients. The estimate of the vascular function has been carried out by the means of the Winsor Index (WI), which is based on the proportion between the values of the occluding arterial pressure of the posterior tibial in comparison with the humeral arterial pressure. This quotient is able to discriminate the real peripheral vascular insufficiency from the borderline cases as well as from the normal ones, even if not in the presence of painful pathology. We have examined 50 patients; in this group 17 subjects (34%) resulted affected by peripheral arteriopathy of the inferior limbs; 8 of them presented a bilateral form with a pathologic WI; 2 patients of the same above mentioned group resulted symptomatic for pain. The remaining 9 presented a unilateral arteriopathy; of these patients, 6 resulted symptomatic for pains and 3 of them had an already pathologic WI before the stress test. On the contrary, no patients visualized signs of coronary disease; the superficial ECG suffered no alteration; the cardiac frequency has in total increased by 5.8 heart rate.