Tests for so-called capillary fragility of the skin and the significance of positive tests in vascular disease

Abstract

Positive capillary fragility or positive tourniquet tests are terms used loosely to describe intracutaneous hemorrhage produced by standardized doses of trauma (suction or venous compression). These tests for capillary fragility are crude and cannot be performed accurately by counting petechiae. Sources of error are numerous and can be overcome only by making numerous tests on different days. In the recorded results of this paper intracutaneous hemorrhage in the test is graded one to four plus. Inconstant and inconclusive results have been discarded. A higher incidence of positive tests is found in older patients. Patients with diabetes mellitus which coexisted with hypertension or other vascular disease showed an extremely high incidence of positive capillary fragility tests and this corresponds to the well known high incidence of spontaneous retinal and skin hemorrhages in such patients. All patients with hypertension and also those with arteriosclerotic disease without hypertension showed moderately high incidence of positive fragility tests.