 Remote ischemic preconditioning RIPC occurs when a tissue ex. heart becomes less vulnerable to an ischemic insult if a remote tissue ex. arm has had previous exposure to a period of ischemia and reperfusion. A beneficial effect of RIPC has been demonstrated in several randomized studies in patients undergoing cardiac and vascular surgery, as well as interventional cardiac procedures such as angioplasty. They have shown improvements in cardiac, renal, neurologic and respiratory function. Most have focused on surrogate outcomes, such as biochemical markers of cardiac and renal function in low-risk patients. No trials have investigated only high-risk patients or been designed to detect clinical outcomes. 