Towards characterizing the pressure profiles of medical compression hosiery: an investigation of current measurement devices and techniques

Abstract

Medical compression hosiery is prescribed according to the pressure it applies to a limb. There are many devices available for measuring this pressure, but differences in the design of the systems used, measurement locations, protocols, and operators result in different pressures being measured for the same garment. This article explores the construction of these compression-measuring devices and the sensing involved in order to highlight the potential causes of these discrepancies. The Tension–Elongation profiles of six compression hosiery samples were then measured, and a method of verifying the point pressure measurements from current techniques was proposed and tested. The results of this analysis show that there was an average discrepancy of 1–5 mmHg between point pressure measurements and those predicted from the Tension–Elongation profiles. With respect to on-body measurements, this technique predicted a maximum change in pressure of 3 mmHg for the samples tested.

Keywords:

• compression garments
• medical textiles
• interface pressure
• measurement and verification
• body measurement