Why is it Crucial to Use Personalized Occlusion Pressures in Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Rehabilitation?

Abstract

An increasing amount of evidence has been shown to support the use of blood flow restriction (BFR) in combination with low-load resistance exercise to enhance morphological and strength responses. The BFR technique involves applying a tourniquet cuff to a limb and pressurizing it with a tourniquet instrument to restrict, but not fully occlude, arterial blood flow into the limb during rehabilitative exercise. A review of BFR rehabilitation literature shows that inconsistencies exist in methodology, equipment and in levels of restriction pressure used. Current non-personalized methodologies of setting BFR pressure may occlude rather than restrict blood flow, increasing the risk of injury during rehabilitation. Furthermore, these non-personalized methods of setting pressure do not provide a consistent stimulus within and across patients, reducing the efficacy of the BFR rehabilitation and inhibiting the meaningful comparison of a full range of BFR studies. A restriction pressure level set for each individual patient, based on a percentage of limb occlusion pressure (LOP) measured at rest, and applied using a surgical-grade tourniquet cuff, enables those individual patients to receive a safe and consistent BFR stimulus compared to other methods of setting the restriction pressure level. In view of the above, it is crucial to use surgical-grade tourniquet technology with automatic LOP measurement capability, adapted to incorporate and deliver optimal protocols, for safe and effective application of BFR to consistently achieve optimal patient outcomes in rehabilitation.