While technical methods are now available that render it possible to repair acute arterial injuries with a great deal of success, experience suggests that lesions of this type still are often improperly treated. Unnecessary complications, loss of time, and even loss of limb or life, can be the result. It seemed useful, therefore, to review our observations with civilian arterial trauma in an attempt to clarify and re-emphasize some of the important therapeutic principles and evaluate the clinical results of the technical methods used.
Clinical Material
The series of cases consists entirely of civilian traumatic arterial injuries and comprises 61 lesions in 59 patients. Ninety per cent of the patients were male, and the majority of the injuries occurred in individuals between their third and sixth decade.The sites of vascular injury are depicted in Fig 1. As is usually the case, the majority of the lesions were in the