• Venkatesh Selvaraj and Faiza Sulaiman Buhari.
• Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Porur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
• Ann Card Anaesth. 2016 Jan 1; 19 (1): 63-7.

ContextSuccessful arterial cannulation requires wide and patent arterial lumen. A recent study has shown that success rate of radial arterial cannulation at first attempt is more at 45° angle of wrist extension in both young and elderly patients. No study has reasoned whether these high success rates at 45° is because of less compression of the radial artery at this particular angle of wrist extension. Hence, we attempted to study whether the radial artery dimensions changes with increasing angles of wrist extension in young, healthy female volunteers using ultrasound examination.AimTo investigate the effect of increasing angle of wrist extension of 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, and 75° on radial artery dimensions at the level of the wrist joint using ultrasound examination.Settings And DesignA prospective single blinded study in volunteers.Subjects And MethodsSonographic measurements of radial artery dimension at the wrist level were performed in 48 young, healthy female subjects. Height (anteroposterior in mm), width (mediolateral in mm) and depth (skin to artery) were measured at wrist extension of 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, and 75°. The dimensions at each angle are compared with 0° as the control and statistical analysis done.Statistical AnalysisOne-way analysis of variance test.ResultsNo statistically significant change in dimension of the radial artery is observed with increasing angle of wrist extension.ConclusionUltrasound evaluation showed that increasing angle of wrist extension does not significantly change the dimensions of radial artery at the wrist joint level in young healthy female volunteers.

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