2020 Volume 10 Issue 2 Pages 55-60
The purpose of this study was to obtain the cutoff point for the depth of surface imprint method for the identification of pitting edema. We enrolled 65 patients (39 men and 26 women) diagnosed as having pitting edema who showed stable symptoms and 35 controls (11 men and 24 women) who were community-dwelling healthy elderly adults. We instructed the subjects to sit on the edge of a chair and lightly press the soles of their foot onto the floor. We measured the left and right depths of the surface imprint in the back of the third metatarsal head using an edema gauge. In the statistical analysis, multiple logistic regression analysis was performed using the presence or absence of pitting edema as dependent variables, and the depth of surface imprint, sex, age, height, weight,and body mass index as independent variables. Then, a cutoff point was obtained from the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and the sensitivity and specificity were calculated. Consequently, the depth of the surface imprint was extracted as a factor that affects the presence or absence of pitting edema, with an odds ratio of 135.0. From the ROC curve, the cutoff point of the depth of surface imprint was 2.25,with a sensitivity of 0.83 and a specificity of 1.00. The present study suggests that the depth-of-surface imprint method is a useful evaluation tool for discriminating the presence or absence of pitting edema, with a pathological identification value of 2.25 mm.
