Arterial injuries complicating orthopaedic surgery.

The possibility of accidental injury to an artery in the course of surgical treatment has been known for centuries. Galen described an incident in which a young surgeon damaged the brachial artery in the course of phlebotomy, and commented that most such cases resulted in aneurysm. William Hunter also described arterial injury as a complication of phlebotomy. In recent years there have been a number of articles in which a variety of arterial injuries following orthopaedic surgery have been described. Many orthopaedic operations are done near major arteries, and often under a tourniquet when an injury can easily be overlooked. It is, perhaps, surprising that with so many operations annually performed, the number of accidents is so low.