Capillary Refill
1 Division of Pediatric Critical Care, Dept of Pediatrics, The University of Utah Medicine Center, Primary Children's Medical Center, Salt Lake City, UT 84113
We are writing to comment on the article by Gorelick et al, "Effective Ambient Temperature and Capillary Refill in Healthy Children" (Pediatrics 1993;92:699-702) and, in particular, the accompanying editorial by Barth (Pediatrics 1993;92:723-724). It is hardly surprising that capillary refill time is affected by ambient temperature or that it is an imperfect indicator of tissue perfusion. We hope that their intention was not to imply that clinical assessment of perfusion is a useless endeavor, however.




