Blood vessel surgery

Abstract

A comparison of statistics of World War i and World War n shows a higher incidence of gangrene from ligation of major arteries in World War ii. Reports from World War ii show that gangrene occurred in almost half of the cases in which major arteries were ligated. Most artery repairs at the time of initial injury were unsuccessful, giving almost as high a percentage of gangrene as in those ligated. Similar poor results from vascular repairs have been reported from the Korean conflict. The importance of the time factor from inJury to surgery both clinically and experimentally has been presented. Different types of blood vessel repairs are discussed and precautions and complications have been mentioned. Gangrene was found less frequent with delayed urgent surgery and least frequent at definitive surgery. Reparative vascular surgery was found to be more successful in delayed urgent surgery than initial injury, and most successful at definitive surgery.