Ischaemic-reperfusion damage of tissue and critical limb ischaemia

Recently, the quality of the critical limb ischaemia therapy (CLI) has evidently increased due to the development of the surgical techniques, material and endovascular methods. Most vascular surgeons, in their effort to help patients, advocate an active approach to re-vascularisation also in those patients who in the past had to undergo primary amputation. The fact that the best results of re-vascularisation are referred from large specialised centres cannot be contested. One of the expected causes of re-vascularisation failure (local or complex) is also ischaemic-reperfusion damage (IRD) of the tissue (Fig. 3, Ref 27).