Skin vasomotion investigation: A useful tool for clinical evaluation of microvascular endothelial function?

Skin vasomotion is the rhythmic variation of skin microvessel diameter responsible for skin microcirculatory blood flow oscillation, the so called skin blood flowmotion. It can be easily investigated by means of the spectral analysis of skin laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) signal. Experimental and clinical findings suggest that vasomotion is partially dependent on microvascular endothelial activity. Based on this, investigation of skin vasomotion, using spectral analysis of skin LDF signal has been recently proposed for the investigation of microvascular endothelial function in clinical setting. Clinical studies have demonstrated that the LDF technique coupled with spectral analysis of skin LDF tracing is a useful and accurate method for the measurement of skin microvascular endothelial-dependent vasomotion in patients with different pathological conditions. In these studies skin vasomotion investigation showed a higher sensitivity in the evaluation of skin microvascular endothelial function than tests based on the simple LDF measurement of skin blood flow response to different stimuli. Further studies are needed to evaluate whether the investigation of skin endothelial-dependent vasomotion can predict clinical and therapeutic outcomes of patients with vascular diseases. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.