Increase in blood flow is generally followed by a rise in skin temperature but decrease in blood flow in response to the Gibbon-Landis procedure after sympathectomy is not necessarily accompanied by a fall in surface temperature. This poor correlation between skin temperature and blood flow confirms the previous report of Hoobler and co-workers and helps define the limits of usefulness of measurements
of skin temperature as an index of blood flow to the extremity.
The vasomotor responses to the Gibbon-Landis procedure (reflex response to warming) were studied in hemiplegic patients, subjects with "high transection" of the cord, and in sympathectomized patients.
One patient with documented transection of the cord above T5 behaved like subjects after surgical sympathectomy.
Of 11 sympathectomized limbs tested for vasodilatation in response to the Gibbon-Landis procedure, 4
showed no response, while 7 responded with decrease in blood flow (vasoconstriction).
Vasomotor Responses in the Extremities of Subjects with Various Neurologic Lesions
I. Reflex Responses to Warming
By WALTER REDISCH, M.D., FRANCISCO T. TANGCO, M.D., LOTHAR WERTHEIMER, M.D.,
ARTHUR J. LEWIS, M.D., J. MURRAY STEELE, M.D.
1957;15;518-524 Circulation