Temperature and blood rheology in fingertips as signs of adaptation to acute hypoxia

Abstract

It is found that the absolute values of temperature and color infrared image of the fingers and palms in healthy volunteers and in patients with hemorrhagic shock are in the same range, so they don’t represent precisely their condition. It turned out that what really matters is the dynamics of temperature and color infrared image of the palms after cuff occlusion test. In healthy volunteers and in patients with high resistance to shock, there is a rise in temperature and change in color from blue to red in the infrared image of the fingers and palms for 1 - 1.5 minutes after elimination of ischemia, but in patients with low resistance to shock there is a decrease in temperature and expansion of blue color in the palm surface in the infrared image. On the other hand, to assess the resistance to hypoxia in a fetus inside a mother’s womb it is proposed to determine the duration of the period of the fetus stationary state during apnea period in pregnant women by using ultrasonography or during period of uterus tonic contractions during childbirth. We found that if fetus has high resistance to hypoxia, the duration of stationary state during the apnea or uterus contraction is greater than 20 seconds, and after exhaustion of reserves for adaptation to hypoxia it approaches zero. It is shown that growing hypoxia causes decrease in the local temperature of the central area of the skull and vice versa.