Surgery for varicose veins: use of tourniquet

Varicose vein surgery is a common surgical procedure but there is no consensus regarding the best surgical technique. The use of tourniquets during varicose vein surgery has been advocated as a means of reducing the potential for blood loss during the operation.

To identify whether the use of a tourniquet should be recommended when undertaking surgery for the management of primary varicose veins.

The reviewers searched the Cochrane Peripheral Vascular Diseases Group trials register (last searched November 2001), thirteen electronic bibliographic databases, including the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (CCTR) (last searched Issue 3, 2001), covering biomedical science, social science, health economic and grey literature (including current research). In addition, the reference lists of relevant articles were checked and various health services research related resources were consulted via the Internet. These included health economics and HTA organisations, guideline producing agencies, generic research and trials registers, and specialist sites.

All studies described as randomised controlled trials that examined the use of tourniquets during surgery for patients with primary varicose veins were included.

Data from eligible studies were extracted and summarised independently by two reviewers. All studies were cross-checked independently by the reviewers.

A total of twenty published papers and nineteen studies were identified. Only three of these were randomised controlled trials and were included in the review. Sixteen studies were excluded as they were non-randomised and one was a duplicate study. All three trials had a small sample size and reported the trial design, outcome measures and analysis poorly. There were also variations in the outcome measures used between the trials. In addition, there was no consistency on the reporting of mean and medians for blood loss during the operation. It was therefore not possible to pool the data to perform meta-analysis. However, the reported blood loss when using a tourniquet was between 0 and 16mls compared to between 107 to 133mls when not using a tourniquet (p<0.01).

Although there were significant quality issues with the available evidence, the use of a tourniquet would appear to reduce blood loss during surgery. There were no reported differences between the use or non-use of a tourniquet in terms of complications and morbidity. However, the available trials were not of sufficient size to detect rarer complications such as nerve damage.