The use of Bier's block for day case surgery.

With the increasing popularity of day case surgery it is important to ensure that safe and appropriate techniques are being used. We retrospectively reviewed a large series of 732 patients who underwent planned day case hand surgery under intravenous regional anaesthesia (modified Bier's block) over a 5-year period. We found a modified Bier's block to be ideally suited to day case surgery with no deaths, minimal morbidity and a success rate in excess of 98%.