[The role of the endothelium of the microcirculation in the physiopathology of critical ischemia in the lower limbs as well as other forms of ischemic pathology].

Critical ischemia of the lower limbs, the condition of decompensation of chronic obstructive arterial disease, is the upshot of a series of pathophysiologic events involving both the macrocirculatory and microcirculatory systems. It ist, however, the latter modulator of the decompensatory stage of arterial disease that conditions the severity and hence the anatomical and clinical pattern of ischemia.