Our study 20 years on: a randomized clinical trial of the effect of deliberate perioperative increase of oxygen delivery on mortality in high-risk surgical patients

Introduction Goal-directed perioperative therapy (GDT) is now part of a number of international perioperative protocols and, to some extent, seems to have come of age, but no research takes place in isolation and it is valuable to retrospectively look at influential papers to understand the context and influences of the time the research was undertaken. Methods One of the earliest publication of a randomised trial of GDT was a study we published 20 years ago in 1993, with co-author Professor E. David Bennett. In this article we describe the work leading up to our research, and look at the historical context of our study and choices we made in designing a protocol. Conclusion With 20 years of hindsight we consider the issues that have arisen following our study and place this into the whole of the debate around the use of GDT.