Skin stress and blood flow in sitting paraplegic patients.

Sitting paraplegic subjects, tested on a hard seat at a location 2 to 3cm lateral to the ischial tuberosities, develop roughly the same median pressure values (range 52 to 60mmHg) as groups of normal subjects and hospitalized geriatric patients. However, median paraplegic and hospitalized geriatric shear values are roughly three times median normal values. Median rates of pulsatile skin blood flow volumes for sitting paraplegic subjects, while roughly equal to those of hospitalized geriatric subjects, are only one third those of comparable normal subjects.