Remote Preconditioning and Vascular Surgery.

Remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) is a theoretically attractive strategy for organ protection; and phase 2 studies in a variety of settings have yielded promising results. In this article, we review the existing clinical studies on RIPC in vascular surgery. We examine aspects of design that may potentially be optimized in future vascular surgery studies and we highlight some challenges that have emerged since the publication of the Remote Ischaemic Preconditioning for Heart Surgery (RIPHeart) trial and the Effect of Remote Ischaemic Preconditioning on Clinical Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery (ERICCA) trial.