Introduction: The British Society for Surgery of the Hand's (BSSH) Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) guidelines recommend that surgery for traumatic amputations of the digits is ideally performed during normal working hours even if this results in a delay of up to 24 hours.
Objective: To compare current practice against the BSSH GIRFT guideline regarding the timing of digital replantation and to compare the success rate of replantation performed within working hours (same or next day) and outside of working hours.
Materials and methods: A single-centre retrospective analysis of two years of digital replantation was performed. A comparison was made between success rate of those operated within and outside of normal working hours. Secondary outcomes included operating time, rate of revision surgery, rate of interposition vein grafting, and the effect of the mechanism of injury on success rate.
Results: A total of 32 digital replantation attempts were included in 21 patients. 71.9% of cases (n=23) were performed within normal working hours, demonstrating good compliance with GIRFT guidelines. The success rate of digital replantation attempts was 68.8% overall (n=22). The success rate of same day in hours replantation was 66.7% (n=6), 78.6% (n=11) for next day in hours replantation, and 55.6% (n=5) for digital replantation attempts made out of hours. Revision surgery was required in 28.13% of all replant attempts (n=9). 55.56% (n=5) of cases requiring revision were ultimately successful. The rate of vein graft use was highest in cases taking place same day in hours (75%; n=3) and lowest in cases same day out of hours (22% n=2). The average operating time per digit was 5.5 hours for same day in hours cases, 4.8 hours for next day in hours cases, and 7.1 hours for out of hours cases.
Conclusion: Digital replantation during normal working hours was associated with higher success rate although no statistically significant difference was observed between timing groups. Replantation during normal working hours was associated with shorter operating time per digit, and lower revision rate, although statistical testing was not performed.
Keywords: digital amputation; digital replant; hand trauma; ischaemia time; microvascular surgery; success rate; timing of surgery.
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