The regional blood flow in skeletal muscle after high-energy trauma was studied. The thigh musculature of anesthetized pigs was wounded with a high-velocity missile. The blood flow was measured with a technique using radioactive microspheres and also with a new laser Doppler flowmeter. Both methods showed very little flow in the discolored, traumatized muscle tissue nearest the missile track, whereas normal flow was found in more distal, normally colored muscle. There was good correlation between the results with the two methods. The laser Doppler flowmeter was shown to be a noninvasive technique permitting flow recordings in small areas of tissue surface. The restriction of flow impairment to the discolored areas of the traumatized muscle implies that discoloration is a useful clinical guide during debridement of traumatized muscle.