Huntleigh Diagnostic Devices: Patient Monitoring for Primary Care

Vascular Assessment and Treatment

Peripheral arterial disease affects around one in five people aged 60 and over, so a GP with an average list size of 1,800 patients can expect to be caring for roughly 50 to 60 people with PAD at any given time.

The ankle brachial pressure index, or ABPI, is the frontline test used to detect peripheral arterial disease and confirm that compression therapy is safe to start for a venous leg ulcer.

Huntleigh's vascular range covers both the Dopplex for assessment, and Hydroven for the compression treatment that usually follows.

What ABPI Measures and What the Results Mean

ABPI compares systolic blood pressure at the ankle with the higher reading from both arms, giving a ratio that reflects how freely blood is reaching the foot.

A result inside the normal range confirms compression can usually safely go ahead, while a low result points toward arterial disease, something compression could worsen.

Result interpretations generally follow these NICE-aligned ranges:

• Below 0.5: severe arterial disease, refer urgently for specialist vascular assessment.
• 0.5 to below 0.8: arterial or mixed disease present, refer for specialist vascular assessment.
• 0.8 to 1.3: no evidence of significant arterial disease, compression can usually proceed.
• Above 1.3: may indicate arterial calcification, treat the result with caution.

Readings above 1.3 are common in patients with diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or advanced chronic kidney disease, where calcified vessels can resist compression and push the ratio artificially high regardless of the equipment used.

Manual Doppler and Automated ABPI Systems

To check blood flow in the legs during an ABPI assessment, clinicians typically use a handheld Doppler probe alongside a standard blood pressure cuff.

Against angiographic imaging, this manual method has been shown to reach 95% sensitivity and 99% specificity, which is why it remains the reference standard in everyday care.

During a community leg ulcer clinic, that probe can be something like Huntleigh's Mini Dopplex D900, a pocket doppler built for quick bedside checks.

For these assessments, the right probe for the vessel matters more:

• 8MHz probes suit standard, shallow checks or calcified arteries close to the skin's surface.
• 5MHz probes reach deeper tissue, making them the better choice for oedematous limbs.

Getting the frequency right is what keeps the signal clear, whatever the patient's condition.

The Dopplex ABility takes the opposite approach, and rather than a probe and cuff that you read manually, it uses dual chamber cuffs on all four limbs at once.

Instead of a handheld Doppler signal, it's measured through plethysmography, and produces a pulse volume waveform alongside the ABPI figure itself.

The waveform is important in patients with calcified vessels, because its shape can flag arterial disease even when the ABPI number alone reads as falsely reassuring.

The trade-off here is accuracy: a systematic review of automated devices found a pooled sensitivity of 64% and specificity of 96% for detecting PAD, and Huntleigh's own evidence base runs to six separate studies, more than all but one of the other automated systems NICE has reviewed.

The Dopplex ABility also cuts an assessment that takes an average of 15 minutes with a manual Doppler down to 3 to 5 minutes, without needing to rest the patient first.

Current NICE Guidance

NICE guidance concluded there is not enough evidence to recommend routine adoption of automated ABPI devices to detect peripheral arterial disease in people with leg ulcers, and that they should only be used in the context of research for this specific patient group.

The guidance was published as DG52 and has since been renumbered HTG677, though the recommendation itself has not changed.

That restriction applies specifically to detecting PAD in people who already have a leg ulcer, not to ABPI testing generally, and Wounds UK published a Best Practice Statement in 2024 to help clinicians consistently apply the guidance rather than shelving automated devices altogether.

Outside leg ulcer assessment, in wider PAD screening, diabetic foot review or intermittent claudication work-up, automated ABPI keeps the time and staffing advantages that made it popular in the first place.

Assessment to Treatment: Hydroven IPC

Once compression is confirmed safe, Huntleigh's Hydroven range picks up where Dopplex leaves off.

Hydroven uses intermittent pneumatic compression to treat oedema, lymphoedema, chronic venous insufficiency and post-phlebitic syndrome, and it is licensed as an adjunct in acute and chronic wound management, including venous leg ulcers, when combined with an individualised monitoring programme.

The LymphAssist mode mimics manual lymphatic drainage rather than simple sequential compression, and in a randomised trial it reduced distal leg volume by an average of 230ml against 140ml for standard sequential compression over the same treatment course.