Anaesthesia for vascular surgery on extremities

Peripheral arterial reconstruction or bypass surgery can be prolonged. Maintenance of normothermia is important, but significant fluid shifts and blood loss are relatively rare and invasive monitoring is not usually needed. Patients presenting for limb amputations are a high-risk group and have a high mortality and reduced long-term survival. Optimum preoperative and postoperative is especially important in this group to hopefully minimize the development of phantom limb pain, although no one particular anaesthetic technique has been shown to be consistently effective.