Summary
In one experimental series 52 forest workers sat naked at 11 °C air temperature for 35 min. During the last 15 min the right hand and forearm were exposed to 2 °C air in a cooling-box. Finger skin temperatures were recorded thermoelectrically. Finger pulse “volumes” were recorded by mercury strain gauges. 10 subjects suffered from “traumatic vasospastic disease” (TVD) attribuatable to use of chain-saws (Group III). 30 subjects used chain-saws but had no symptoms (Group II). 12 subjects had not been exposed to occupational vibration (Group I). Upon general cold exposure the fingers in Group III cooled to significantly (p< 0.01) lower temperatures than did the fingers in Group I. This difference may reflect an individual predisposition to TVD, or it may be due to an increment of finger cold vasoconstriction caused by occupational vibration and appearing before full-fledged attacks of Raynaud phenomena. Such attacks were not provoked by the present cold exposure.
In a second experimental series 26 forest workers with TVD exposed one hand to 5 °C water for 20 min. The occurrence and the magnitude of the cold-induced vasodilatation did not differ between the fingers reportedly affected by TVD and those where symptoms had not been observed.
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Hellstrøm, B., Stensvold, I., Halvorsrud, J.R. et al. Finger blood circulation in forest workers with raynaud phenomena of occupational origin. Int. Z. Angew. Physiol. Einschl. Arbeitsphysiol. 29, 18–28 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00695705
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00695705