The ability to assess the blood flow to a bone (IBF) is important for orthopaedic surgeons when deciding the fate of an injured or diseased bone. Currently there is no easy and effective method for quickly assessing the blood flow status of a bone. There is accumulating evidence that suggests that IBF may be correlated to intraosseous pressure (IOP).

Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether the two variables are correlated so that the orthopaedic surgeon could confidently use IOP as an indicator of IBF.

Using 8 mature female ewes (B.W. ~56 kg) we measured cardiovascular (eg. arterial blood pressure – ABP), and intraosseous (ie. IOP and IBF) responses to nor-adrenaline (0–1.5 μg/kg/min. i.v.) and nitroglycerine (0–80 μg/kg. i.v.) IBF was measured using semi-quantitative technique of laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF).

Our results revealed that changes in ABP were directly correlated to changes in IOP (p < 0.001). Due to technical difficulties that were encountered when using LDF, the collected IBF data were limited. However, there was compelling evidence that there is a positive and direct correlation between IBF and IOP.

This opens an exciting possibility of using IOP for quickly and accurately assessing IBF as well as providing insight into the pathological mechanisms responsible for bone and joint disorders.