| This experiment involved the exploration of electrical resistance and compliance in human subcutaneous and skeletal muscle tissues in amputated lower limbs. Electrical resistance was measured as a function of depth in both tissue types. Measurement involved using a system that consisted of a needle, software, and an electrical circuit. Compliance was measured by injecting saline and measuring the resultant change in tissue pressure using a transducer. A curve of added volume versus resultant pressure was made. The slope of this curve is compliance.;Electrical resistance was shown to differ in the subcutaneous and skeletal muscle layers using two statistical methods. The first method involved the Wilcoxon signed rank test, which was used to show that a set of individual specimen mean resistances in the subcutaneous layer differed from a set of individual specimen resistances in the skeletal muscle layer. The second method involved calculating one global geometric mean resistance in subcutaneous tissue, and a separate global geometric mean in skeletal muscle tissue, using data from all samples tested. The geometric mean subcutaneous tissue electrical resistance was 23.686 Kohms (12.3159;While electrical resistance and compliance were both shown to be different in subcutaneous tissue as compared to skeletal muscle, the data showed a great deal of variability and had overlapping ranges. It is possible that additional properties, such as elastic modulus, may be used in combination with either electrical resistance or compliance to make a real-time distinction between tissue types. Additional experimentation can be done to explore clinically useful applications of this information.* ftn*Originally published in DAI Vol. 58, No. 4. Reprinted here with corrected author name. |
