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tized or ecchymotic digits, calling the physician for significant changes.
The technique is atraumatic, and avoids patient anxiety which produces
unwanted peripheral vasoconstriction. Temperature monitoring is also
inexpensive and readily available.
Lower Back Pain
Lower back pain is one of the most common complaints of patients
seeing a physician. Many complaints originate from work related acci-
dents and contribute to a tremendously large number of hours lost from
work. A study of 800 patients presenting with lumbar complaints and
radicular asymptomatology
by Weinstein et al
3
com-
pared the relative value of five
diagnostic modalities and
confirmed the accuracy of
temperature as a method of
confirming the presence or
absence of root syndrome in
low back pathology to be well
above the 90th percentile.
Barkan demonstrated that lumbar radiculopathy can be detected by
temperature measurement with accuracy equal to CT Scan or myelo-
gram.
4
These studies support the findings of many other similar stud-
ies,
5
,
6
,
7
,
8
,
9
and clearly support the use of temperature measurement
as a non-invasive technique without radiation, capable of reducing the
number of invasive and uncomfortable myelograms and expensive CT
scans of the lumbar spine.
Diabetic Foot Screening
Pedal infection is the most common cause of hospital admissions for
diabetic patients in the United States and Great Britan
1
,
2
,
3
, with more
than 50% of the 125,000 amputations
performed in the United States each
year directly attributable to their dis-
ease.
4
The American Diabetes As-
sociation estimates the costs of treat-
ing lower extremity amputations ap-
proaches $10 billion annually, but in-
terestingly, data from the Centers for
Disease Control demonstrate up to
85% of diabetic foot and leg amputa-
tions can be prevented.
23