Tourniquet Time in Hand Surgery

One thousand five hundred consecutive hand operations were performed in a bloodless field with the use of a pneumatic cuff tourniquet. An arbitrary time limit of two hours' tourniquet application was selected and 95% of the operations were completed within this time limit. The oldest patient was 94 years old and the youngest was 8 weeks old. The ages of the 60 patients whose tourniquet time exceeded two hours varied from 64 to 1 year; none showed any postoperative complications. Two tourniquet paralyses were traced to excessive pneumatic pressure caused by faulty mechanical equipment.