The measurement of intracompartmental pressure during exercise

A chronic compartment syndrome is a condition of pain in the lower leg that occurs during exercise. The pain is caused by raised intracompartmental pressure which compromises the microcirculation causing temporary ischaemia. Onset occurs at progressively shorter distances until any exercise at all becomes impossible without extreme pain. This problem usually affects serious athletes in their early twenties but can also occur at any age following even the lightest exercise. The authors describe a method of differential diagnosis based on measuring the intracompartmental pressure during exercise. A slit catheter based transducers are employed which are connected to amplifiers and the signal is displayed on an eight channel chart recorder and stored in a microcomputer