Purpose: Incurrent incidence of frequently injuries of popliteal and distal arteries were reviewed and presented.

Materials and methods: We studied retrospectively a fifty-six patients with popliteal and distal arterial injuries in our department between January 1983 - July 1997. 43 (77%) cases were male and 13 (28%) cases were female: The ages of patients range from 10 to 60 years (mean: 29.5). The causes of injuries were; the blunt-penetrating injuries in 28 cases (50%), the gnusthot wounds in 20 cases (36%), the blunt injuries in 8 cases (14%). The time between the injury and getting to the hospital was ranged from 2 hours / endash to 4 days (mean: 11 hours). The vascular injury localisations in that order of frequency were popliteal artery in 25 cases (45%), tibialis posterior artery in 15 cases (27%), tibialis anterior artery in 11 cases (19%), peroneal artery in 5 cases (9%).

As the operative technique in these cases; in 23 cases (41%) end to end anastomosis, in 4 cases (7.2%) lateral repair, in 23 cases (41%) otolog saphenous vein graft interposition, in 1 cases (1.8%) synthetic graft insertion, in 5 cases (9%) simple ligations were performed. In 6 cases (10.7%) amputations were performed. Mortality rate was 9% (n=5).

Conclusion: In this study, we presented injuries of popliteal and distal arteries cases, which require emergency surgical intervention in the patients who the risks of related extremity and life and also have higher rate of morbidity and mortality.