Ep. 32 BFR, surgery & your heart - the cardioprotective ability of Blood Flow Restriction

Hi everyone and welcome to today's episode.

I've enjoyed putting together this short mini-series on the collective ability of using BFR in multiple different scenarios to assist with improving the operative outcome - in this case knee surgery.

Today's episode is around the cardioprotective ability of using Blood Flow Restriction prior to surgery. In particular, perioperative myocardial infarction is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality after major non-cardiac surgery.  Therefore the ability to reduce myocardial injury and other ischaemic complications of surgery holds great benefit. 

Using BFR in this instance, is a great option as traditional methods to reduce the risk are usually pharmacologically based which although the may reduce the risks they do have side-effects in some patients.

The article is pretty heavy with mechanisms so if you are interested please download the article. 

Cardioprotection by remote ischaemic preconditioning.

British journal of anaesthesia, 99(5), 611-616. Walsh, S. R., Tang, T., Sadat, U., Dutka, D. P., & Gaunt, M. E. (2007). 

If you haven't yet got a set of BFR cuffs please head to my the shop on this website to buy your own. If you have any questions please ask as I really want to ensure you get the best use of Blood Flow Restriction for you. 

If there is anyone listening that may benefit from this, please share it.

Thanks for listen

Chris