[Amputation in vascular surgery--a subject in this time?]

The peripheral limb amputations represent a current topic in spite of the medical and technical improvement, which also nowadays payed too little attention. We are not only concerned about limb amputations themselves in the present. They were always regarded as the most fatal mutilate procedure in surgery. In time the medical aspects came into the centre of attention. Because of enormous improvements in vascular diagnostic and therapy it is possible to preserve a great number of amputation threatened limbs and to keep a high measure of daily-life-quality for those patients [10]. Nevertheless a great number of our vascular surgery patients must be amputated today since local conditions, limited therapeutic possibilities, accompanying-illnesses and infections as well as an increasing multimorbidity do not enable to preserve the limb. In the following article our own dates and causes are will be analyzed and further consequences for the future will be point out.