PEDIATRICS Vol. 92 No. 5 November 1993, pp. 723-724
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Capillary Refill: Is It a Useful Clinical Sign?

LARRY J. BARAFF MD1

1 Ucla Emergency Medicine Center, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1744

Capillary refill is a clinical sign popularized in the past 15 years. Intuitively it is a measure of peripheral perfusion which is likely to be a function of cardiac output and peripheral vascular resistance. It is a semiquantitative test, with a value of < 2 seconds generally considered to be normal.

In 1980, Champion et al1 proposed capillary refill as one of five elements of the Trauma Score. Two seconds was defined as the upper limit of normal. After the publication of the Trauma Score and the inclusion of capillary refill as a formal means of evaluation of not only trauma patients but of many other classes of patients, including children,2,3 my colleagues and I made the bedside observation that capillary refill was not a reliable clinical sign.

Submitted on May 11, 1993
Accepted on May 11, 1993




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